Euthanasia

John just lays in his bed, in anguish thinking about how his life has been and what could've been. His sadness is only surpassed by the extreme pain he feels in his head. He describes the pain as intense sharp moments as if someone where hammering a nail into his brain. John has been told that his pain is due top an undetected malignant tumor in his brain. John is then told that he will die a very painful death. Of course, he will be placed in meds to help alleviate the pain, but still John will suffer. John knows that he will suffer and his family as well as they see him dying slowly and painfully. Thus, John asks his doctor if he can "relieve" him of his pain.

Every there's hundreds of terminally ill patients that wish to be relieved of their pain somehow. They don't want to suffer like in John case. However, mercy killing, euthanasia, is not allowed.

I became interested in euthanasia because I'm an advocate of doctor-assisted suicide.

Therefore, in my speech I will provide you with information that shows why euthanasia should be used and legalized.

I will accomplish this by providing you with a brief history of euthanasia, then I will discuss the reasons that justify euthanasia, and finally I will discuss some of the popular arguments against euthanasia.

To start off, I will discuss the history of euthanasia. Euthanasia is defined as the act of mercifully ending the life of a hopelessly suffering patient. It's derived from the Greek word meaning, "easy or good death". There is two types of euthanasia "active" and "passive". Passive euthanasia is when they withhold a patient from life-sustaining treatments, such as taking them off respirator. On the other hand, active euthanasia is causing a virtually painless death in cases where life would've otherwise continued, i.e. Lethal injections. Dr. Jack Kevorkian practiced this. He helped out a lot of patients with his killing machine, the "mercitron". Dr. Kevorkian justified his actions by saying that it was actually doctor-assisted suicide, because the patients where the ones that did the final step. However, Dr. Kevorkian was still tried and to prison where he is now serving 60 years. Today, euthanasia is still a topic of controversy. Although euthanasia is illegal in most places, the people that are for it are growing.

Now I will discuss some of the reasons of why euthanasia should be allowed. First of all, tremendous pain and suffering can be saved. There are numerous ailments in which death is slow and agonizing. Why would a patient want to spend his last months vomiting, coughing enduring pain spasms, and losing control of his excretion functions. It's simply more humane to allow the patient an opportunity to skip through all this. Another reason why euthanasia should be allowed is because the right to die should be a fundamental freedom of