Voluntary euthanasia or doctor-assisted dying

Abstract

Euthanasia is defined as “an act of ending one’s life to relieve pain and suffering” (Singer, 1993: 175). Being one of the controversial topics in bioethics, it has proponents that call it a peaceful death and opponents that call it murder. The advocates of voluntary euthanasia bring the following arguments for legalization of euthanasia; personal autonomy, relieve pain and suffering, kill or letting die, whereas the opponents bring the slippery slope, religion, trust in doctors and medical practice, availability of alternatives as the arguments against the legalization. The aim of this paper is to understand whether voluntary euthanasia should be legalized or not, and, if so, what are the conditions that the law should include in order to avoid abuses and misuses of euthanasia. However, the safeguards that should protect terminally ill patients from abuses and misuses of euthanasia prove to be in some aspects ineffective. The findings indicate that Oregon’s law is more successful than Netherlands and Belgium’s laws (Green, 2002). Even though neither of the laws and systems described in the paper is perfect, the legislation of the countries that legalized euthanasia give possibilities to terminally ill patients of choice. So, it is concluded that there is a need to make the laws stricter and to provide sufficient tougher safeguards against misuses and abuses of the euthanasia law.