Its Time to Understand Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide :: Free Euthanasia Essay

It's Time to Understand Euthanasia Your wife of 50 years is suddenly diagnosed with a terminal disease. She lies in a bed, motionless and unaware of her surroundings. The medication to ease her pain has been wearing off. She just lies there in pain and unable to communicate with the outside world. The doctors give her a month to live at the most. What would you do? Would you let her sit in a hospital bed in agonizing pain for the last few months of her life, or do you help her to prematurely meet her God? That is the topic of discussion in this paper: Euthanasia. Let's start by defining the term. Euthanasia is also referred to as "mercy killing." That is the killing of someone for their own good due to the pain and suffering they are enduring. Euthanasia also includes situations where the individual who is suffering makes the decision to die, a type of suicide actually. In today's world there are two types of euthanasia that are most common. The first are people who, perhaps because of serious illness or perhaps for reasons unrelated to their illness, are extremely depressed and say that they want to die (Johanson 1). Research has shown that the vast majority of these people are just asking for sympathy and don't really want to die but rather hear the calls of there loved ones begging them not to go on with the procedure. They want the attempt to fail. The second type of euthanasia involve people who are suffering from an illness that makes them unable to communicate (Johanson 2). These type of people are those who are in comas, paralyzed, or simply so sick that they cannot make meaningful sounds or other communication (Johanson 2). This is a much more accepted type of euthanasia. Especially in the Netherlands where Euthanasia is more common then the United States. There are two sides to attack this issue from. One being from the view of the Catholic Church and the other from a legal standpoint. Lets start with the legal standpoint. Who has the right to tell us when or when cannot die? Many feel that we have the right to do whatever we want to our bodies because they