Moral Issues Surrounding Euthnasia (Term Paper Sample)

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Moral Issues Surrounding Euthanasia
Euthanasia has indeed become a point in question that is impacting large number of people’s in today’s society. The term "Euthanasia" causes bewilderment and frenetic legal and ethical debate across the nations. Euthanasia refers to the intentional act of terminating person’s life for the purpose of ending the patient’s agony (Firth 47). Physician assisted suicide is demonstrated by euthanasia. Besides, some people elaborate the term euthanasia to constitute both voluntary and the involuntary termination of life. Euthanasia is a sophisticated issue that comes with difficult questions associated with the duties of the modern government and the rights of the patriotic citizens (Lavi 111). The main hypothesis of those proposing the legalisation of euthanasia is the right of the citizens, regardless of the intolerable pain, the freedom and self determination to choose when and in which area they will die in. The main hypothesis that opposes the legalisation of euthanasia focuses on the functional role of the governance and also the lack of the government to support the acts that are breaching the rights to life of the citizens (Lavi 113). Majority of people are dying from acute diseases such as cancer in hospital, the major concerns are the issues that are instituted out by their pain and agonies, family suffering. These are the major issues of concerns about why this "euthanasia issue" will forever be debated in this nation. This particular essay identifies and gives back on the ethical, moral and the legal stand of euthanasia in general. I will be examining the hypothesis for and against its legalisation both from the Christian and the secular point of view. I will reflect on its moral implications, applying the moral principles, and laying emphasis on its legal position.
Morality Position of Euthanasia
The most rudimentary mechanism for preparing our own value of judgements is what might be referred as the morality. This is elaborated as the identification, recognition of features and the application of values to those features in order to achieve a skeleton of reference from which to conduct our lives (Orfali 113). It is not possible to know how instinctive our morality is and how much it is learned. This is due to the fact that from birth, instinctive perception is passed on to us from our parents and bombarded with environmental factors. As we undergo the growth development stages of life, we start abstracting in terms of good and evil, right from wrong, incorrect from correct, right and wrong. Moreover, we are able to organize things into systems and groups, and we distinguish them as good and bad, right and wrong, correct and correct. In addition, we begin thinking about other people and distinguish them as evil or good people. Life becomes a philosophy of looking at things and characterizing them by our inherent judgement. It becomes an array of judgement formulated according to the moral philosophy. Hence, we develop morality and rule our lives by that moral philosophy.
Morality assigns meaning to life itself and in return, we are able to prepare a concrete judgement about life in general. The value judgement will not be associated or related to anything other than our individual personal morality. This is due to the fact that each one of us designates his own personal value to his own life and those of others about him. The person will contribute his common morality to the extent that the people acknowledge that human life is meaningful and valuable (Orfali 119). Again, we must embrace an accepted frame of reference in order to accommodate our common moralities if we disagree about the measure of the value of life.
Christians are majorly against euthanasia by emphasizing that life is given by God. Human life is meaningful since it is God’s creation. Issues of Physician assisted suicide, a form of euthanasia violate the divinity of life, that human life belongs to God.Termination of the person’s life should not be executed by the human being,only by God the source of all creation. In addition, birth and death are stages of life which were created by God. Because of this, stages of life should be granted maximum appreciation and respect for all human beings. Hence, no human being has the ascendancy of terminating the precious life of any virtuous person even if that person wants to face death (Orfali 123).
Christians believe that human beings are priceless as they are created in the image of the Supreme Being. They believe that human life occupies an inborn dignity and value due to the fact that life is formulated by God in his own representation and correspondence for the fundamental destiny of sharing in God’s manifestation of life (Orfali 129). Besides, stating that God created the human race in his own image does not necessarily refer that people impersonate God’s image, but that the human race has a distinctive capacity for intelligent existence. This provides a knowledgeable insight to discern essential good from evil. Furthermore, their abilities will become more established and this qualifies them to live a life that is more adjacent to God’s life of adoration. This is a positive practice that is associated with the morality. Because of this, human life should be safeguarded at all cost so that this could become a way of doing things. Some people argue that supporting euthanasia for a person is adjudicating that the individual well being is not priceless, which is entirely wrong. This is due to the fact that human life cannot be measured on a scale, and it is for this reason that the human life is priceless.
Christians argue that the means of dying are spiritually meaningful as it’s profoundly seen as a spiritual time. They argue that it is amiss to hamper with the process of dying as this would widely impede the process of the spirit moving toward the Holy One, God. They believe that Supreme Being is the source of life and the originator of death and for these reason human beings should not interrupt the one’s death process.
Christians view all human lives as symmetrically value, and that life is identical in all the approaches. They argue that the intrinsic dignity and the priceless value of human lives are a way that each human life is symmetrically valuable. This is not the case with euthanasia since it lays emphasis on the mobility, successful achievements and disregarding the importance of how priceless the life of a human being is. Besides, utilitarianism is used to solve the ethical problems that physician assisted suicide presents. The theory emphasizes that it is our moral duty to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This theory stresses that life must be measured on a scale to determine its significance and death must be legally defined (Firth 121). All these issues presented by euthanasia are not in any way correlated with morality hence they lose the value of persuasiveness. It is because categorizing person’s life, the quality of life literally suffers a loss and gradually people lose the ability to change.
Legal Position of Euthanasia
In looking at the legal framework, that encircles euthanasia, there is an important distinction in the United Kingdom laws that exist between active and passive euthanasia. The laws within the United Kingdom elaborate active euthanasia as causing the death of an individual through a straight forward action in acknowledgement to a request from that particular person. On the other hand, passive euthanasia is defined as precipitating the death of a person amending some form of support and letting the nature to take its progress (Stearman 110). A good example of passive euthanasia is to remove the life support machine or halting the medical procedure and prescriptions issued by the doctor, stopping the ongoing medication and so forth.
Physician assisted suicides cases are illegal and punishable by law. During the Anthony Bland ruling in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom Supreme Court of 1993, the "assisted suicides" that are another form of euthanasia that involved the removal of life care saving machine were considered not illegal (Gosic 120).In contrast, taking active action to terminate person’s precious life including the physician assisted suicide is considered illegal even with acquiescence. The "assisted suicide" such as the physician assisted suicide is classified as the criminal act which is punishable by law. Because of this, this form of euthanasia has no distinctive position in the current society. Besides, the Suicide Act of 1961 made a ruling that of one becomes criminally liable for complying in another’s person suicide and interestingly, declaring suicide itself as being illegal unless the conditions become too severe(Gosic 127). The prosecution of euthanasia in the UK courts has been considered distinct from the other cases of unlawful termination of life. The acquiescence of the Attorney general ...