Euthanasia comes from the Greek word “good death.” It’s the act of purposely ending your life to be relieved from pain and suffering or in other words, mercy killing. Mercy killing is the killing of a patient who is suffering from an incurable disease. Euthanasia is only legal in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It’s Illegal in America. I believe euthanasia should be legalized in the United States because it should be our own decision to choose what we want. I also believe it’s beneficial for those who actually consider it.
“Medicare pays about 55 billion dollars to doctors and hospital bills for only two months of one patient’s life. It is stated that only 20 to 30 percent of that money doesn’t really have an impact to the actual patient,” according to 60 minutes.
Legalizing Euthanasia wouldn’t only be helping those who are terminally ill, but it will also help the economy. A huge question that would obviously come up would be who would be aloud to practice euthanasia? There should be reasons if someone is considering euthanasia, as in medical reasons.
Aruna Shanbaug was a nurse at Mumbai King Edward’s Memorial Hospital in India. On the night of Nov 27, 1973 she was raped by a boy who also worked at the hospital. He used a dog chain to control Shanbaug, which cut off the blood supply to her brain. Shanbaug became brain dead.
For many years, she lived in a vegetative state. Shanbaug’s friend filed a plea for euthanasia, but the supreme court of India declined the request saying that she was being well cared for by the staff at King Edward’s Memorial hospital and all her former nurse friends wanted her to live. On May 18th 2015 Aruna Shanbaug finally passed away.
Shanbaug was in a vegetative state for forty-two years. For forty-two years of being alive, she was also simultaneously dead. All those years of lying in bed doing nothing because it was the “right” thing to do. I agree humans have the right to live, but what Shanbaug was going through was not living. She was only physically there, nothing else.
Euthanasia is seen as inhuman, but what about making someone live a lifeless life. Shanbaug couldn’t move or even feel for forty-two years. It’s like being locked up in a box and there is no way out. Feeling all the air in you draining away, while you try to grasp it back. Your body is screaming inside, begging to be cut away from the rope wrapped around your body, begging to be released from this prison.
Who chooses to decide if we are able to die or not? What makes rejecting medical treatment any different from deciding to let go of physical pain if the outcome is going to be death? If I were in a situation to choose between life and death for my own well being, my thought would go straight to euthanasia. People might say they would never do such thing, but I honestly doubt they wouldn’t even consider it. To say you wouldn’t practice euthanasia without having any prior personal experience with this topic is one thing, until you get put into this situation and have a full understanding of the positivities that comes from euthanasia, then one will understand. We choose what we think will be the best outcome for our lives and our deaths. It’s a matter of believing something is right, so we want to see it as sane. Not everybody is going to practice euthanasia.  If someone has the option to choose, let him or her choose.