Should Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legal?

Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal?

Terminally ill people should have the right to end their suffering with a quick, dignified, and compassionate death by being able to choose between euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. It would provide a way to relieve extreme pain and a way of relief when a person's quality of life is low. It would also cut back on medical costs and free up medical funds to help others.

Doctors have a moral responsibility to keep their patients alive as reflected by the Hippocratic Oath. There may be a "slippery slope" effect from euthanasia to murder, and that making euthanasia legal it will become a means of healthcare cost containment that will unfairly target the poor and disabled and create incentives for insurance companies to terminate lives in order to save money.

Ultimately, I believe euthanasia should be legalized. Safeguards should be put in place to avoid the parade of concerns trotted out by opponents - some of them are well taken. But wholesale laws prohibiting assisted-deaths are ultimately nothing more than government-sponsored religious-based dogma and should be repealed and replaced with sensible, compassionate laws. It is the individual's right to end his or her life. I stand behind this if they are facing a terminal or debilitating illness to avoid excruciating pain, and neither society nor the government should have a say.