Should euthanasia be legalised in the UK?

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Carmen Barlow        Essay 4

Should Euthanasia be legalised in the UK?

 

   Usually, ethics and morality-related topics are held responsible for yielding most of the controversial issues among societies. Those issues tend to vary from one place to another. One of the core concerns the Western world has been elaborately debating about is euthanasia, or, sometimes, preferably called physician-assisted suicide.

   Whilst involuntary euthanasia is found to be consensually morally impermissible, people still argue the acceptance and the moral aspect of voluntary euthanasia. Furthermore, passive form of euthanasia doesn’t seem to fit our definition given at the onset since it results sometimes in a rather painful death and prolonged suffering. Therefore, active euthanasia seems to draw the most attention among activists and lawmakers.

  Is active euthanasia ethically acceptable? Should it be legalized? From my perspective, it’s my belief that euthanasia should be legalised in this country. What if an individual would want to carry on living such a hard life to the extent were they cannot move or talk and have to have the burden of having someone spend their entire life attending to their needs. It’s very understandable that they would not want this, as you or me may agree. But then if they did decide they wanted to die, it is not even legal to expect euthanasia in Britain. Is it really fair to send a highly incapacitated human being to a far away country just to end their suffering? They can’t work for a living so they are possibly not going to have the money to travel far and what if they wanted to die with their family in the country they previously lived their life in? Maybe they could look at countries where euthanasia is legal and see that it has been successful so far, but to me it just seems like it is depriving the individual’s basic rights of life.

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  On the other hand many people worry that if voluntary euthanasia were to become legal, it would not be long before involuntary euthanasia would start to happen. It is concluded that it is virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia are truly voluntary and that any liberalisation of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. People are also concerned about vulnerable people - the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed - would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death. This is called the slippery slope argument. In general form it says that ...

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