Written by Dhwani Seth
Euthanasia or mercy killing is still illegal in India in 2022; even after several nations have made voluntary euthanasia legal now, euthanasia remains a crime in India. Though India has made passive euthanasia legal under some conditions as well.
The types of euthanasia include
1. Active euthanasia (Killing the patient deliberately, for example with the use of lethal drugs) and passive euthanasia (intentionally letting the patient die, by removing life support)
2. Voluntary euthanasia (euthanasia with the consent of the patient) and involuntary euthanasia (euthanasia without the patient’s consent).
Involunatary euthanasia may be subcategorized into: involuntary (euthanasia against the patient’s wish), and nonvoluntary (when it is not possible to take the patient’s consent).
3. Self-administered euthanasia(when the patient administers means of death) and other administrated (when the other administers means of death) and assisted (when the patient receives help from another person to perform the mean of death).
Euthanasia is the act of deliberately ending a person's life to relieve their suffering. It seems reasonable to end a person’s life, so they do not have to bear needless pain; but people against Euthanasia make fair arguments as to why it should remain illegal.
The majority of Islamic countries prohibit euthanasia, as it is seen as against slam and equated to murder. In Hinduism too, it is considered that suffering is a result of the Karma of a person, and a person has to endure this suffering to make up for karma, so in Hinduism euthanasia is considered wrong. Christians believe that humans are created in the image of God, and so Christianity also goes against euthanasia. Most religions, for such reasons, forbid euthanasia.
Germany has a history of Nazism. The Nazis were committed to maintaining the German race’s ‘purity’, so they introduced a euthanasia program; this was described to Germans as ‘a glorious death’. In the program, numerous mentally ill and those who were declared unworthy of living were killed. The Nazi’s reason for this was to save society at the expense of keeping them alive. Given this context, the current German government, when it does not legalize euthanasia fears that there will be some misuse of it. So in germany, euthanasia is a taboo topic.
In the Netherlands for example, a woman refused to get proper treatment, though she was not suffering badly enough for euthanasia to be performed on her, and would have likely been cured, she refused to get other treatment. In this case euthanasia is no different from suicide. Euthanasia may be agreed to by a patient under a family’s influence also, or by the patient to relief the family of expenses, or by the patient for their own selfish reasons such as in few of the cases above. Once euthanasia is legalised medical care also may decline, and people may start being seen as selfish to not resort to euthanasia when a patient’s medical condition gets bad. Once a patient is suitable for euthanasia, they may be pressure by society into performing it.
Countries that have legalized euthanasia have made sure to look at what advantages the legalization poses. Among these, one of the arguments is that the person will be able to determine their own way of death and have control of the situation. When a person knows their disease is incurable, or hard to cure, and it is likely that they will die; the person would much rather die with some control over the situation. Other than this it is more convenient to let an ill person die without suffering than pay more just for the person to die after a lot of suffering since these treatments are costly. Allowing people who are willing to die, and will die regardless due to illness will also free up health resources.
Still, even though the Indian government has justified reasons as to why they don’t legalize euthanasia, I am in favor of its legalization. Though people may oppose it, it allows people a choice on whether they want euthanasia to be performed or not. As for the misuse of euthanasia, that is something we cannot avoid. But according to me, the benefits of it outweigh the rare cases of misuse tha its legalization might cause.
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