Question

State your chosen topic Euthanasia?

What is one specific legal issue related to your chosen topic euthanasia?

What is one specific ethical issues related to your chosen topic euthanasia?

Share a court case related to your chosen topic. Why did you choose this case Roe v wade?

Answer 1

Euthanasia is termination of a very sick persons life in order to relieve them from pain and suffering. the term euthanasia derives from a Greek word, which means "good death."

there are different forms of euthanasia. active euthanasia is when death is brought by an act , example, giving a high dose of drug that will lead to death or an lethal dose of an injection. passive euthanasia is when is brought by an omission example, when the patient is left to die, means either by withdrawing treatment (switching off some ventilator that keeps the patient alive) or by withholding treatment (not carrying out some life increasing surgery).

legal issues

a. misusing autonomy; families involved in care of a sick person may regard them as a burden that they no more want to carry and often they misuse the will given by the sick person to gain their selfish aims as the sick may have some property and assets.

b. pressure on the family- it becomes so expensive in terms of medical care and supervision to cope up with the financial loses suffered by the care giver as it sucks all the money and makes them indebted or poor.

ethical issue according to religious point of view, it is believed that life is a gift from the almighty God and that a person does not have the right to take it on its own. killing ourselves or taking some aid to do the same is against Gods will. many old age people who are abandoned by their families feel euthanasia to be an option in the days of their sickness.

pressure on the vulnerable- when AIDS patients or disabled people are abandoned by their family members, they sort for a quick painless and easy death as the only option they are left with.

case- Aruna Shanbaug case, India

she was a nurse working in Mumbai's Edward Memorial hospital where she was chained and sodomized by a ward boy in the hospital in 1973. this led to deprivation and total cut off of oxygen to her brain and she was left in coma in permanently vegetative state for 37 years. later, in 2010 a friend and journalist & activist Pinki Virani filed a petition for mercy killing for her. but the government could not allow it as her relation to the victim does not give her the rights to do so. she was allowed to live and died a natural death. but after this incident in 2011, Indian government legalized passive euthanasia.