Against. The humane response to the suffering person is to tend to her needs, not to kill her. Suffering can be lessened without killing the patient. Killing someone represents an inhumane experience for both the person who carries out the deed and the person who is killed. Human life is marked by finitude. Humans have limited control but, ultimately, are forced to accept phenomena which they cannot change. Sickness and death fall into this category. The humane response to a dying person is to keep him company and alleviate his discomfort.
There is no medical or ethical reason to deprive a person of all the pain medication needed to keep him comfortable and, for most people, a regimen of palliation and comfort care can be established in either a health care facility or at home. To be sure, keeping company with the dying and caring for their physical needs is a demanding task, but it is not a task devoid of benefits. In the face of death real communication often occurs and caretakers frequently relate how their experiences with dying patients, relatives, or friends help them come to terms with their own mortality.
Nature has its own laws and, allowed to take its course, each human life will end in death. Mature, integrated people can accept this sobering fact and seek the completion of their human development through grappling with the inevitability of the dying process. If we decide that our role vis-avis death is not to be its witnesses while caring for the dying and, rather, attribute to ourselves the right to kill the dying, then we have taken a regrettable step. If euthanasia becomes acceptable, we would need to ask ourselves what would happen to both dying people and to ourselves.
The answer to this question is that the lives of the dying would be ended by assaults which would probably be experienced as frightening and uncaring. Things would likely be even worse for the living who kill the sick and the weak, because they would have to live with their consciences while trying over and over to justify what civilized societies and health care ethics have long condemned. It is difficult to rationalize a killing role and more difficult to live with the psychological fallout resulting from assuming that role. (2) For.
Ending suffering is a lesser evil than prolonging suffering. We need to respond to the sick and dying who request deliverance with compassion and assistance. If a person does not want to suffer through the dying process, it does not make sense to force him to do so to satisfy someone else’s ethical scruples. No one who opposes euthanasia needs to carry it out, and there is no danger of being euthanized against one’s will. To answer a person who wants to end his life by assuring him that you will administer plenty of pain medication and will keep him company will not necessarily be satisfying.
For some people, admittedly a small percentage, no amount of pain medication is sufficient. For others, the request for deliverance is not made because of physical pain but, rather, because of some other reason, such as the lack of dignity which comes from frailty and no longer being able to manage personal hygiene. In addition, many dying people are not comforted by having caretakers and loved ones nearby; they would prefer to finish the final chapter of their life as quickly as possible, by euthanasia.
The compassionate response to a free and informed request for deliverance is to assist the dying to bring about a swift and pain-free death. Yes, this death is an evil which diminishes the human community, but it is less of an evil than the continued unwanted suffering experienced by a sick or dying person. We shoot horses, don’t we? Why is it so difficult for us to accept the fact that we owe at least this much mercy to each other?