Euthanasia: Not Just for Kids in China

Euthanasia, as defined by Oxford English Dictionary is the action of inducing a gentle and easy death; used especially with reference to a proposal that the law should sanction the pulling painlessly to death of those suffering from incurable and extremely painful diseases. Terminally ill and suffering patients should have the right to choose death over life.

An individuals right to die is protected by the same constitutional safeguards that guarantee rights such as marriage, procreation, and the refusal or termination of life saving medical treatment. These rights and arguments have been used in several US Supreme Court cases, including the Oct. 1996 case of Dennis Vacco vs. TImothy Quill, M.D. The plaintiff quarreled that, "The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the personal choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill individual to terminate unendurable suffering and hasten inevitable death" (Unknown, 1996). Martin Gold, J.D. argues that physicians " . . . should be legally permitted to accede to the desire of a patients to hasten death when the patient's decision is voluntarily reached, a patients is competent to make the decision, and the patients have been fully informed of the diagnosis and prognosis of an incurable, fatal disease which has progressed to the final stage . . ." (Kass, 2010). The plaintiffs in the case also argued that, " . . . denying terminally ill patients not on life support medical assistance in hastening death violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment", (Unknown, 1996).

Individuals are given the option of authorizing a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), which is a means of ending their lives to avoid suffering. Families are placed with the decisions of life support, which, if disregarded or terminated, leads to the death of the patient. How is euthanasia any different of an option? This argument goes along with sovereignty of the individual over his own body. As citizens of the United States, we are guaranteed unalienable rights that give us freedom and control of our own body. Euthanasia is a quick, dignified, and compassionate way of ending the life of a terminally ill or suffering patient. The pain and suffering, the inevitable ending, is it worth being held captive in a hospital bed or living half the life of the person you once were? The alternatives of pain, limited life style, and increased medication can be compared to death itself. At some points, escaping life leads us to truly living.



Kass, L. (2010). Procon.org. In Procon.org. Retrieved from [Only admins are allowed to see this link]


Unknown. (1996, October). aclu amicus brief in vacco v. quill. Retrieved from [Only admins are allowed to see this link]