Should the United States Legalize Euthanasia?

Euthanasia is known as the practice of deliberately ending a life which releases an individual from an incurable disease or intolerable suffering, also known as a gentle and easy death. Currently Euthanasia is a worldwide topic being discussed, but is not allowed by law to be practiced on people. Most people either strictly forbid it because of religious belief or moral belief, but most people firmly favor euthanasia because of personal experience. Euthanasia should be legalized because patients with a terminal illness are given the choice to end their life in the most painless way.
On October 27, 1997 Oregon was the first state to pass the Death With Dignity Act. This Act allows people who are terminally ill to ask their doctors for lethal medication.It is required that patients make two verbal request and one written request with a witness present. Then two doctors must agree on the patient’s diagnosis, prognosis and the patient's capability. The patient must administer the lethal medication themselves(Nitschke). However, Oregon laws strictly prohibit euthanasia, but what if someone is to ill to write or verbally speak? What then? Is it right that a person has to suffer through 6 months of life support before they die just because the law says that even though a person is going to die soon that it is wrong to help them end their suffering.
Many people today connect Euthanasia to the famous case of Terri Schiavo, where after 5 years of being on life support, her husband made the conscious decision to remove her feeding tube and other medications. After Schiavo's death they conducted an autopsy which established that her brain weighed half that of a healthy human brain -- severe damage that left her blind and incapable of thoug...

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...tent enough to decide on suicide. People who are not depressed. Everyone has a right for suicide, because a person has a right to determine what will or will not be done to his body.”

Works Cited

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ProCon.org. "Euthanasia ProCon.org" ProCon.org. 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2013. euthanasia.procon.org/>. Nitschke, Dr Philip. "Death with Dignity in Oregon, Washington & (soon to Be) Montana."
Euthanasia and the Law in the United States of America. Dr Philip Nitschke, n.d. Web. 25 Oct.
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Abby Goodnough, "Schiavo Autopsy Says Brain, Withered, Was Untreatable", The New York
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Emanuel, Ezekiel. "Whose Right To Die? - 97.03."Whose Right To Die? - 97.03. The Atlantic
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