This is a difficult topic to lecture on. The title is a bit misleading because we are not addressing the right of people to end their lives for any and all reasons. I am referring to the terminally ill or mortally wounded who will not recover from disease or injury. What we have is a somewhat difficult set of ideals; one is the person has intrinsic value and two their humanity must be maintained regardless of disease or injury. We have difficulty because we value human life and the disagreement is not in the value of human life but in how we honor the value of each human life in terminal illness and injury. Some say to allow someone to die without attempting to save them is devaluing their humanity because of their condition, the other believes we are devaluing their humanity by prolonging the suffering.
In my opinion, each side has a point to be made and depending on the circumstance I might agree with each of them. Example: Joni has been told she has 6 months to live and only 10 percent chance of survival if she agrees to chemotherapy. Joni’s mother and father want her to go through chemotherapy because a 10 percent chance of survival is better than none. Joni’ and her husband do not want her last remaining months to be spent suffering in chemotherapy. Everyone agrees that life is worth fighting for but not everyone agrees when there is no longer a reason to continue the fight.
I do not have a problem with allowing someone to die of natural causes when there is nothing further that can be done to save them. Life is more than breathing and a beating heart, the whole life must be considered when allowing someone to die. To extend suffering for the sake of breathing and a pumping heart is not to consider the individual but only their temporary bodily function. To be human is more than how our individual parts function. A person who no longer has the use of their legs, eyes, or mental sharpness is not less human than anyone else, dignity is not in our functioning but in our being human.
Mercy death is the act of killing another person with their permission to do so, This is problematic because we are no longer addressing only a persons right to die, but a persons right to allow another human being to kill them. The problem with mercy death is no one has a natural right to ask another person to kill them. To make that request of another is to potentially harm them psychologically for the rest of their life. The other issue is that it provides an opportunity for the psychologically disturbed to take advantage of someone who is dying and in pain. In each circumstance someone is potentially being grossly violated or allowing another person to participate in killing another human being without legal consequences for their actions. Allowing nurses or doctors the right to kill their patients could attract individuals in the medical field we would not feel comfortable with treating our loved ones.
Mercy killing is the act of taking a terminally ill persons life without their consent. This is problematic for obvious reasons. First and foremost it has nothing to do with the right of a patient to die since the individual has not been given a choice over the action. Second, even if the act was done with good intentions there is plausible doubt as to if the person wanted to have their life ended since no consent was given only assumed; this puts the individual with the good intentions in the moral, social, and legal hot seat.
The heart of the issue with the right to die is to protect individual humanity and to not prolong unnecessary suffering. We do not want others or ourselves to suffer a slow agonizing death, but at the same time we must think and act carefully about how we handle these emotionally and ethically difficult circumstances. The truth is that it can be just as unethical to prolong life as it can be to end it. Because we can keep someone physically alive does not imply that we should, and because we can end the life of a suffering loved one does not mean that we should.
If Aristotle was correct that excellence of virtue is our end he may have approved of the term ‘Euthanasia” which means “ a good death”, but what a good death is must be well defined. I would like to define a good death as the following: a good death is where neither the one dying or those near the dying have their humanity , dignity, or moral conscience violated or compromised by another.
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