Speaking and Listening Coursework (Euthanasia Speech)

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Euthanasia

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Good afternoon; before we begin, I would like you to imagine a scenario for me. Visualise yourself confined to a bed, unable to lead the active lives you do now, watching the world pass you by, breathing with the aid of a machine. No hopes of a cure, no hope of escape, only able to count the minutes, day, months, waiting for death, now consider living like that for 10 years. Now how would you feel if I told you that this was indeed the reality for Spanish women Immaculade Echevarria after being told she would never recover, being told that the remainder of her life would be spent on her back, under medical supervision, a tube down her throat, she like many decided that this wasn’t really living. Thus she made several attempts to request active Euthanasia. After being denied again and again for both moral and religious reasons she was however able to refuse her treatment. Which I must stress is not the same s Euthanasia, which would have been a quick painless death; in the end Mrs Echevarria suffered a slow agonising suffocation.

Classmates, I would now like you to consider what you would do in the same situation? Would you wish to take a dignified way out, when no hope remained? So today I will be discussing the morality of Euthanaisa, the benefits and what it really means, for although I’m sure many of you will have herd the term, you may just be unaware of its true meaning.

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To fully understand what Euthanasia is, we need to look at the origin of the world; Euthanasia comes from ancient Greece, and means ‘good death’.  The ancient Greeks and Romans generally did not believe that life needed to be preserved at any cost and were, in any consequence, tolerant of suicide in cases where no relief could be offered to the dying or, in the case of the Stoics and Epicureans, where a person no longer cared for his life. So even in this ancient society, a society which prided itself on its logic, reason and morality, considered the choice of how one dies is just as important as their choice of how to live.

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Indeed we can see in cases as recent as the 20th century; where assisted suicide, is seen as acceptable; Religion Reverend Geoffrey Morris 74 makes the comment that when – “a soldier in battle confronted with a colleague dying in agony from his wounds is almost morally obliged to shoot him or provide him with a loaded gun to shoot himself. Yet dying patients can’t expect of doctors engaged in the same battle for health the same merciful end to their agony. There is something wrong here. Even suffering animals are humanly dispatched”

“I have no doubt that the ...

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