Help with a euthanasia debate?

Question

For school I have to write a for and against table for the issue of euthanasia. I have to write my speech from the against side. Could someone help me out and give me some points for the for and against table? I would REALLY REALLY REALLY appreciate it.

thanks :)

Answer 1

For:

Prolonged vegetative Coma Patients

Patients in constant pain

Terminally ill patients facing a drawn out and painful Death.

If you go back to antiquity there are deformed or financially unwanted children. Of course these days they call it abortion and do it a few months earlier.

Against:

Sanctity of life

Making money from killing (for the doctors performing the euthanasia)

Killing in general

Buyers remorse. (Irrational mental state leading to bad decisions.)

Those are just a few I could pick off the top of my head.

  

Answer 2

It would be hard for me to give you arguments against euthanasia, but I can give you a few arguments for:

1. A person should have the right to die with dignity

2. The state should not have the right to interfere with a person's private choices regarding life and death

3. Euthanasia affords terminally ill people the advantage of planning their deaths and arranging to die before they become a burden on family.

Answer 3

Against - Once someone has the legal 'right' to kill themselves, it opens the door for the ill, elderly and handicapped to be pressured to do so even when they have no intention of dying.

Someone had mentioned that a person may want to go before they become a burden on the rest of the family.  What if the family feels as though this person is a burden and they want him or her to kill themselves?  Can you imagine your relatives giving you pressure to hurry up?  ((shudder))  Kids or grandkids making comments about how they are so busy and can't keep looking after them and cannot afford to put them in an assisted care situation.  People will end up killing themselves because they feel their family don't love them and everyone would be better off.

If this door *God forbid* ever gets opened, we will see real quickly that it better be slammed shut and the key thrown away.  It should never be an option.  We don't choose the time we are born and aren't meant to choose the time we are to die.

Answer 4

I euthanized my cat who was old and terribly ill and I just didn't want him to suffer in pain any longer (he had mouth cancer and it hurt for him to eat and also had a problem going to the bathroom).  Now for sick animals I can't see why you wouldn't want to put them out of their misery in a pain-free way like euthanasia.  Humans on the other hand, that's a whole other issue...