Long Island Coalition for Life, Inc.
Oratory Contest
Pro-Life Speech on Abortion
by Jessica Abejart
1st Place 2007
Speech Against Euthanasia
by Jessica Abejar
"I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel."
There are many translations of the ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath, believed to be written by Hippocrates "the Father of Medicine." But whatever translation physicians choose, all physicians vow to never allow for the intentional killing of a patient.
The intentional killing of a dependent human being by an act or by an omission is known as euthanasia. The key word is intentional. A person must want to be killed. This form of euthanasia is called voluntary euthanasia and requires consent from the patient. These people can be killed by an action such as injection, or by an omission such as non-provision of necessary and ordinary care. They can also be given the information, guidance, and means used to intentionally take their own lives, a procedure known as assisted suicide. In recent years, this issue has become such a controversial matter, expanding itself into an international debate.
The term euthanasia has expanded so widely that the term can refer to any sort of intentional killing through medical means. While many euthanasia activists would think that the process remains voluntary, the practice has come to include non-voluntary acts, in which the patient is entirely unaware of the event, or involuntary acts, in which the patient's wishes are contrary to the action taken.
Reasons why an act is done range from terminal illness to suffering to finances to "the right to die." However, these reasons do not fully justify why euthanasia should be performed. Usually euthanasia has only been for the terminally ill, but just like the definition of euthanasia, the term has come to include so many things. For example, before his imprisonment for assisting in Thomas Youk's death, Dr. Jack Kevorkian stated that terminal illness meant "any disease that curtails life even for a day." Some laws refer to it as having an illness in which death will likely occur in a "short period of time." However, medical experts claim that the life expectancy of patients cannot be exactly determined and that many outlive their predictions. Supporters of euthanasia would declare that these patients suffer from a lot of physical and emotional pain; however, those against euthanasia would claim that pain can be eliminated or reduced. Supporters of euthanasia would argue that education and treatment needed for these patients would be too costly and that a patient has a right to die. Any person does have "the right to die." A person can ask to be taken off treatment with the intentions of dying naturally. On the contrary, when a person asks to take his or her life immediately by the use of lethal drugs or injection or by an omission of food or water, which are considered necessary care, that person no longer has the "right to die" but instead has given someone else the "right to kill."
Many would confuse "the right to die" with euthanasia. This issue has become the forefront of global debate. Only the Netherlands, Belgium, and the state of Oregon have legalized euthanasia. However, countries such as Spain, Italy, and France are hoping to shift laws and legalize the procedure. In this past year alone, a Spanish woman and an Italian man have died after being taken off respirators while a French doctor was convicted of murder after administering and prescribing a lethal drug to patient. The controversy is that the cases in Spain and Italy are cases of "the right to die" but are referred to as acts of euthanasia. This leads to the demand of legalizing euthanasia, which can eventually lead to widespread use of prescription drugs that are meant for death.
The patients in question are under tremendous pressure. They already face physical and emotional pain, and now must face pressure from doctors, family, and friends, who may find euthanasia to be the best solution. They receive pressure from society who determines what is normalcy and what is ill, what is strong and what is weak, what is human and what is not. But as the late Pope John Paul II once said, "a man even if seriously sick or prevented in the exercise of its higher functions, is and will be always a man ... [he] will never become a 'vegetable' or an 'animal.'" Our society's constant need to evaluate and reevaluate another person's dignity promotes suicidal thoughts. This gives patients the right to suicide which then becomes the duty to die. For the patients in question, intervention is needed but not through an immediate, unnatural, and intentional killing, but through love and support.
Euthanasia comes from the Greek words eu meaning "good" and thanatos meaning "death." If euthanasia is a good death, then why is it the center of so much controversy? As said earlier, it is not a good death because it requires the hand of another human being. Euthanasia is intentional killing, meaning murder. And if euthanasia is a good death, does that mean natural death is bad? A good death should be a death that naturally completes the cycle of life here on Earth, in which a human being can die giving consent and permission to God alone.
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