Mercy or murder? This is the question of the hot topic that America has been debating over the last couple of years. According to Merriam- Webster's dictionary, euthanasia, or assisted suicide, is "the act or practice of killing someone who is very sick or injured in order to prevent any more suffering" (Webster). The simple fact that the word killing is placed in that definition gives people enough ammunition to fire the "murdering argument." It is originally hard to think about this topic because then you have to imagine how you would feel if any one of your loved family or friends tried to utilize this service and you had to let them. Because of this reason, when I first started researching this topic I probably would have agreed with most of America in saying that euthanasia is murder and there is no why that I want this legalized in my home. Death is a tough topic, and with how easy it (death) is for someone to stumble upon it on their own, why would we want to add a service which just hands it over? Just like every controversial topic, euthanasia has a side to it filled with peace and dignity. By looking at peoples' personal testimonies, the validity of the slippery slope argument, and the values euthanasia represents, it is apparent that Euthanasia needs to be legalized in the united states; which is important because as individuals people deserve the right to have a choice. 

Imagine that you are sitting at the hospital, watching a loved one suffer from an incurable illness, listening to them beg you to make it stop, and knowing there was nothing in the world you could do to stop it. Some people have to watch this struggle almost every day, or even worse; some people have to play the role of the suffering. Allison Davis depicts the case of Diane Pretty by saying, "rather than die by choking or suffocation" she wanted to "die with dignity" at a time of her own choosing" (Davis).  Dying with dignity is a key point of euthanasia because it allows people to take control of one thing when everything else is out of their hands. Euthanasia is only administered in extreme circumstances with terminally ill patents. People who have literally no control over their body, actions, or time are given one thing that allows them to control all of them. It may come off a little dark putting it that way, but there is a beauty to it. Being able to give someone control in an uncontrollable situation is what makes this option so appealing. The issues come in when people start falling into the idea that they are helpless. 

Some people want to help so much that they administer their form of assisted suicide. Susan Gubar paints the picture of the Solomon's story. Mrs. Solomon was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, which in its ending stages caused intolerable pain. Mr. Solomon discusses his internal battle with euthanasia being illegal and deciding to use pills as his own form of back up in case his mother could no longer take the pain. He stated, "it becomes clear that the stash of drugs relieved his mother's anguish by providing her a modicum of control. 'Everything that had been intolerable to my mother was made tolerable when she got those pills'" (Gubar). The fact that a man was driven to help his mother "die with dignity" isn't the issue in this case. The post action pain that he and his close caregivers had to go through is what made it worse, "helping her die took a heavy toll on solicitous caregivers who felt complicit in a kind of murder" (Gubar). Knowing it was the right thing to do in his mother's world, Mr. Solomon took the action of helping her in the only way someone in her condition can be helped. If euthanasia was legal then people would not be pushed to do things that would cause them distress for the rest of their life like Mr. Solomon.  

"The word "euthanasia" literally means "a good death" (Davis). The values that euthanasia has come to represent in our modern time are synonymous with "mercy." Some people may even argue that the process of euthanasia is more humane than abortion is. If you think about abortion, it is killing a child without the consent of a child. Abortion is the closest legal thing in the US to abortion, "Abortion kills the unborn without their consent, depriving them of their entire future" (Kaveny). In contrast to abortion, euthanasia requires "the person to be killed both instigates and carries out the killing" (Kaveny). There are many different arguments against both euthanasia and abortion; but when the arguments are broken down it comes back to the question of mercy or murder? The justification of aborting a child can range from not being able to give the child the life it deserves to medical conditions that would cause the child to not be able to function as a normal child or survive past a year of its birth. How is someone who is terminally ill asking to be put out of their misery because they can no longer contribute or participate in society as a functioning person any different? There are so many similarities between these two cases, yet a common answer to compare the two things are that you can't even compare the two because they are too different. The world needs to come to terms with the idea of being consistent throughout it's law making choices. Either make both legal or make both illegal, but don't pretend that the two can be placed in different categories.  

Another outside of the box way to think about euthanasia is though the idea of pets. I realize that this is not applicable to all of America; however, there are some people who consider their dogs or cats part of the family and they are treated as so. Harry Benjamin states, "We shall have to find some legal way to accord human beings the relief that we accord to animals" (Benjamin). Why is it that as a society when a pet needs to be put down for anything as simple as a broken limb it is approached as a mercy? We get ourselves through the tough time of losing a pet by thinking about it with the idea that its going to be hard and difficult, but we are doing the right thing by our pet to relieve them from the pain. When I first came across this argument I immediately dismissed it because I was unwilling to compare a humans' life with that of a dog. I am presenting this argument to simply offer a different perspective to the case. This case helps show the mercy side to euthanasia because if you accept your thinking about a pet it makes it an easier transition to accept it with a human.  

One of the larger arguments is that if all of America legalizes euthanasia it will cause an unreasonable number of unneeded, unjust deaths; or better known as the slippery slope argument. Countries such as the Netherlands, Britain, and the UK are not the only legalizations of euthanasia. Countries much closer to home like Oregon have already legalized euthanasia in their state. To put the slippery slope argument to bed one must look to these countries to disprove the key points. A key point to this argument is that doctors will become "trigger happy" and provide euthanasia to any patent that asks; there for significantly increasing the amount of unneeded deaths. 

In Oregon euthanasia has been legal and since then an average of 40 people per year have utilized it, only 314 people utilized it within the first 12 years of its allowance, and only around 1.7 percent of the population seeks it out (this is just the percentage who ask, not the percent that is granted the use) (Kingsbury). Euthanasia isn't a procedure that can be brought up by the doctor, the patent must seek it out in order for it to be considered. In fact, the process is rather extensive, "The state's legislation requires that the patient, who must be at least 18 and an Oregon resident, make two requests to die within two weeks. Two doctors must also concur that the patient has no more than six months to live and that he is not suffering from any mental illness, including depression" (Kingsbury). In all of the countries that have legalized euthanasia, "safeguards, criteria, and procedures were put in place to control the practices, to ensure societal oversight, and to prevent euthanasia and pas from being abused or misused" (Pereira). In the Netherlands, out of the small amount of people who applied for euthanasia, two thirds of the applicants were not accepted into the program. The misconception that euthanasia can be over utilized is not only a myth, but near impossible with the parameters set before the patent.  

The legalization in euthanasia may even save lives. Looking at a country that hasn't legalized euthanasia like Britain and comparing it to a country that has (like New England) we can see that euthanasia is being practiced in both areas. "In Britain, a 2012 study discovered that as many as 57,000 patients each year die without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped. Instead, they're just shoved onto a "death pathway" designed to alleviate suffering without ever being told" (Morris). In comparison, when you look at a study of the same sort of thing happening in New England before and after the legalization we can see a significant drop, "In 2005, a study by the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 0.4 percent of all euthanasia procedures were carried out without the patient's explicit permission ...  A 1991 report -- written a decade before euthanasia was legalized -- put the number at 0.8 percent" (Morris). Forms of euthanasia occur all of the time, but legalizing it puts a blanket of legal parameters around it that causes doctors to follow a stricter and human way of going about it. It puts the safety on instead of releasing trigger happy doctors onto the sick.  

Another argument involves physicians and the idea that they would be violating their Hippocratic Oath as a doctor if they choose to participate in euthanasia. For people who aren't familiar, the Hippocratic oath is "An oath taken by physicians usually on receiving the doctoral degree, whereby they promise to observe ethical principles in the practice of medicine" (Hippocratic Oath). The focus of this argument lies in the "do no harm" section of the oath. People argue that killing a patent though euthanasia is causing them to harm the patent, therefor breaking it. However, this all comes down to each person's definition of harm. "When a patient is in intense pain or suffering severe mental anguish, our society could be doing more harm by keeping them alive than allowing them to die" (Morris). When a person signs a DNR (do not resuscitate) or makes other advances toward death the doctor can allow it and in some cases even encourage it, "Physicians don't walk away from patients who make other intentional decisions to advance death, such as refusing a ventilator or a pacemaker ...  Why walk away from a terminally ill patient requesting life-ending medication?" (Moisse). Again an argument comes down to perspective, no one can really know what it is like to be put in the position of having to assist in ending someone's life. When a person goes into the medical field the idea is to save lives, but one is also aware of the overwhelming amount of death associated with that job. At some point a physician needs to take a step back to define their personal definition of harm and decide in what way they want to contribute to their patient's life or death.   

When looking at all of the rules and regulations associated with this procedure, I believe that there needs to be a compromise. As we have seen the slippery slope argument is primarily disproven by the fact that the rules and regulations to get approved for it are so extensive. My concern is that these guidelines are too extensive. When a procedure that is actively being pursued by patients is rejecting almost everyone, to the point it has been called impossible, there is going to have to be some lax in laws so it may be utilized in any sense. If a procedure that has 

been proven to be going on illegally is made legal and then no one is able to get it, people and doctors will resort back to the illegal way of going about it. I would like to propose a process that is consistent through the US. As of right now the states have to individually legalize euthanasia and come up with their own regulations regarding its procedures. There needs to be a push throughout the US for this topic to be addressed. Once the states have voted and chose to either legalize or keep the process illegal a group of physicians need to come together and openly discuss the best way to go about this process. The issue with legalizing euthanasia is that we are making politicians come up with ways to approve a medical procedure. Once the physicians have come up with a set of regulations that they believe will allow patents utilize this procedure in the safest way possible the will present it to the politicians and go over the political side of it. This process will continue in each state until acceptable guidelines have been laid out. Bringing a qualified set of physicians into the mix will provide vast amounts of medical knowledge on a medical topic.  

Euthanasia is a topic that has been put on the back burner because it is centered around death. Death is permanent and that scares the majority of the world. However, what people tend to lean towards is the selfish aspect of it. No one wants to have to say goodbye to a loved one before their time; however, if we really love them we need to look at the way they are living. When it comes to the end many people who we love are just a hollow shell waiting for the end to come. If you truly love someone you will set them free. This is true in all aspects of life. Euthanasia is a true act of love when one is able to step back and look at the values it represents. I have shown personal testimonies that display a raw insight into what it is like to be placed in a situation where euthanasia is asked for from a person. Allowing a person to die with dignity and giving them the gift of control in their last seconds on earth is sometimes the greatest act of love that a person can give. After outlining all of these outlines and giving insight to many different perspectives, I ask for each of you to take a step back from the stereotypes of euthanasia and form your own opinion. Bring up this topic and add pressure to the government to finally address and take on this controversial topic. We love our home because we are always given the right to a choice, join me in helping give everyone the option to go about their death with the freedom we are allowed to go about our life. 

