No one has the right to end their lives. No one can claim if their lives have any value or not. May be one may think he is worthless in his own eyes. But there are people who care, it is not just the person who is dying, but all his near ones go through the same level of pain. The person is dead once and for all, but the near ones die daily bit by bit. There should be policies which should determine when someone has the right to end their lives and when not. Only in cases of medical issues, where a person’s live is made miserable by his agonizing pain or a comatose patient is becoming a burden for his family financially and emotionally, it can be considered as an option. But otherwise, in no circumstances one has the right to end their lives.
The person is not the one who decided his birth, hence he cannot be the one to decide his death too. Talking about if active killing and simply expiring make a difference, then yes, it does. Killing is a crime in any form. A person does not have the right to commit suicide. No amount of depression or disappointment is worth someone’s life. A life is a gift by the god, one should cherish it and respect it. Harming oneself is not a solution to any problem, rather it is an act of cowardice. The person may escape from the problems he had, but he is putting his near ones in lot more pain than he was actually in. he is complicating the lives of all the people who were close to him.
In cases of medical issues however, one should have the right to decide when he or she wants to end it (Nhs.uk, 2015) . At times the pain becomes so much intolerable that it is easier to die than to bear the pain. In such circumstances the patients should be allowed to control their lives. It is an act of mercy and assisted by the doctors. Also in cases where there are negligible hopes for a patient to revive after a prolonged illness or a patient is lying comatose since months, it is better to free him and his family from the burden of such life. the patient becomes a burden to his family financially. The rising medical expenditure affects the families of such patients greatly. Especially when there is no hope that when the patient will be back to a normal life, or if he would ever return to a normal life or not, then in these cases it is always better to let the patient go. Such patients are also a burden to the economy of the country. They are using the medical resources which would otherwise have been used to save a life. these resources are being wasted on someone with no hope to be normal again.
In such cases where the lives of the patients are a pain to themselves or their families, it is ethically right to end such lives. They should be freed from the worldly sufferings. But if there is any slightest hope of revival of such a patient, if the doctor thinks that the patient may respond to a particular form of treatment, howsoever costly it may be, in such cases it would be unethical to kill such a person. in such circumstances, the killing would not be named as mercy killing, but it actually is an active form of killing. In absence of any such hope, the prolongation of such life would only bring pain to the patient and the family.
So, we may conclude that suicide is a crime, but mercy killing is not. However, the mercy killing should be logical and along with the permission of either the patient or his family members. Anyone showing the willingness to die cannot be allowed to do so. Neither the doctor has the right to decide if one should live or not. It is the patient himself and his family who should be given the right to take up such a serious decision regarding someone’s life. the reason for validating such a decision should be serious enough and having serious consequences if not taken. The decision should be moral and based on ethical grounds. Thus euthanasia should be legalized but with strict guidelines and policies. It should not be the decision of a single person, it should be the decision taken by numbers of people who are closely related to a medically serious patient. A written consent should always be obtained before taking such a step (Pereira, 2011).
References
Nhs.uk,. (2015). Euthanasia and assisted suicide - Arguments - NHS Choices. Retrieved 25 June 2015, from http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Euthanasiaandassistedsuicide/Pages/Arguments.aspx
Pereira, J. (2011). Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide: the illusion of safeguards and controls.Current Oncology, 18(2). doi:10.3747/co.v18i2.883
