Recent proposals to legalize Euthanasia in the United States have raised the question of whether or not physicians should be granted the power to intentionally end the lives of their patients. It is my strong opinion that Euthanasia should not be legalized because it undermines the dispositions we require in doctors and is therefore destructive of the practice of medicine, it is not our right to terminate life, and it would change society's view of suicide. .
The practice of medicine cannot flourish unless doctors are so disposed that they inspire trust in patients many of who are extremely vulnerable. Doctors will not inspire trust unless patients are confident that doctors are for no reasons disposed to kill them; and have no inclinations to ask whether a patient is worth caring for or treating, rather than asking what care or treatment might benefit the patient. The practice of Euthanasia however, disposes doctor to kill certain of their patients and also inculcates a disposition to think of some patients as not having worthwhile lives. .
A deeper objection to Euthanasia is the truth that we lack the moral right to take innocent human life-even our own. Many are aware of this truth even though they cannot offer a decisive defense of it and may not associate it with God's right over us. Yet conscience tells them that innocent life must not be destroyed. God's sovereignty created us and keeps us in existence; our lives belong to him and we have no right to terminate them when we wish. To do is to usurp a divine prerogative. Unfortunate people suffering from chronic pain do need our sympathy but our sympathy must never cause us to overlook the objections to the greater evil, which is Euthanasia, and other evils related to it. .
Allowing physician-assisted suicide will change the public's view on suicide entirely. Society will begin to look at suicide as a good rather than bad, humane rather than inhumane, legal rather than illegal.
