|
|
Negative Case: Assisted suicide is one of societies more widely, and hotly debated moral issues of our time. More directly, active euthanasia, or assisted suicide, which by definition, is; "Doing something, such as administering a lethal drug, or using other means that cause a person's death." If we ourselves are not in the position of the individual whose life and/or death is being decided, we cannot possibly know or understand what their will is, what they would opt for personally, or even whether or not they can comprehend what is happening. Without knowing for sure what the individual would have chosen, we may well have gone against their will, and thus have committed murder. Ought we not to look into a suicidal person’s emotional and psychological background before we conclude that his or her suicide is acceptable because they are going to die anyway? We ought to take into consideration, the statistics that tell us that fewer than one in four people with terminal illness have a desire to die, and that all of those who did wish to die had previously suffered with clinically diagnosable depression. If we choose to overlook these statistics, and others that tell us that psychotherapeutic treatments are not only available, but equally successful among people with terminal illness, as among people without then we are indeed cutting that person's life short, and thus one again, committing murder.
|