euthanasia1 essays

euthanasia1 essays The option of self-deliverance for the terminally ill person is the ultimate civil liberty. Over the past twenty years major controversy has spawned over the issue of euthanasia: a persons right to die. The American courts have been burdened with determining whether or not the Constitution gives the American people the right to allow others to take their lives, and have failed to come up with a definitive answer. There are several aspects to suicide and the law, but we are only going to discuss a few of them. First of all we will examine why anyone would want to take their own life and decipher the differences between a rational suicide and an irrational suicide. Secondly we will look at ways assistance has played in the area of suicide. Next, we'll look at what the constitution says and see if any of the states have allowed suicide. Finally, we'll study some of the cases that have been brought before the American courts. Suicide has become a big part of American society; year after year more people are taking their own lives for many different reasons. A lot of philosophers have broken down all the reasons of suicides into two different categories, rational suicide and irrational suicide. A rational suicide has been given five basic criteria that usually must be met for the person's act to be considered rational. The five criteria which a person must show for their suicide to be considered rational are, "the ability to reason, realistic world view, adequacy of information, avoidance of harm, and accordance with fundamental interests." Another opinion of rationality of suicide is, "it is the best thing for him from the point of view of his own welfare-or whether it is the best thing for someone being advised, from the point of view of that person's welfare". People have to characterize suicides because a lot of times they don't understand what that person is going through so by grouping them and plac ing crit...