EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE E-Book

Jean-Pierre Wenger

• Herausgeber: BookThug
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 27

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Societies are based on the principle of the inalienable right to life, and indeed States have a duty to preserve life. Euthanasia is based on a human principle: to shorten the unnecessary suffering of the person undergoing a process of terminal deterioration. Of course, different cultures and different bodies of law have different assessments of the subject. The right to assisted suicide or to a so-called "dignified death" generates debates: those in favor ask why, if each person has the freedom to make decisions about his or her own life, the most important decision of all is prevented in a final phase. Those who are against it postulate the deviations that its legalization would provoke: for example, the disinvestment or even elimination of palliative care, considered as an unnecessary expense, and the possible helplessness of a patient in the care of a family overcome by suffering. It is even argued that there is a contradiction between euthanasia and physicians´ Hippocratic oath.

Leseprobe

Right to Die with Dignity

In the first days of July 2023, an article by Cuban writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner was published, which began with the following sentence: “When you read this article, I will be dead”. Indeed, Montaner had died the previous week, at the age of 80, in Madrid. He had begun writing the farewell article at the beginning of 2022 and had finished dictating it shortly before traveling to Spain to fulfill his will: “exercise my right to end my life in a free and dignified way according to my beliefs”.

Parkinson’s had long since begun to consume his life, and the situation worsened when doctors confirmed that he suffered from an atypical and aggressive type of Parkinson’s. In the article he left for posthumous publication, Montaner explains that he had to travel to Spain to access assisted dying legally. He also provides an account of the bureaucratic processes he completed, with advice and support from the Asociación Derecho a Morir Dignamente (Right to Die with Dignity Association). His request was framed within the requirements of the Euthanasia Law, approved by the Spanish Congress in March 2021: the suffering of a serious, chronic and disabling illness.

Montaner’s article intended to invite readers to reflect on the right to life and the right to death. Euthanasia is the name by which assisted death in the face of a serious and irreversible illness is known. It has been the center of debates for decades. It is legal in some parts of the world, while in most countries there are no laws that allow it, which leaves this assistance within the framework of homicide or suicide assistance.

Much of the debate centers on definitions: how euthanasia is understood and why it is or is not considered a “homicide”. There are very thin boundaries between rights, attributions that we can take, between criteria, opinions and decisions. It is an issue that crosses society on multiple levels: the medical, the ethical, the legal, the moral, the philosophical, the religious, the economic and the political. And, especially, it is a sensitive and controversial issue.

•

What is Euthanasia?

It is important to clarify some concepts, since differences in definitions are key to understanding the positions both for and against. “Euthanasia” comes from the Greek “euthanatos”: “eu” means good and “thanatos” means death, therefore etymologically it means “good death”. The Oxford Language defines it as “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma”.

In medicine, “euthanasia” is intentionally causing the death of a patient suffering from an advanced or terminal illness, at the express request of the patient and under medical assistance.