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Right to Live, Right to Die
The United States upholds that by virtue of birth, people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some people claim that the right to life does not include the right to end one's life, while others believe that because these rights are inalienable, the right to end our own lives cannot be taken from us. In the modern world of advanced medical treatment, where quantity of life is common, but quality of life is not guaranteed, euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS) is the humane alternative to a life no longer worth living.
There are a multitude of arguments against euthanasia, pro-euthanasia rebuttals and retorts to those rebuttals. One such argument is that euthanasia would not only be for people who are "terminally ill", which suggests that various definitions of "terminal" will be employed to justify killing as many people as possible. Another is that euthanasia could become a means of health care cost containment, which suggests that doctors will be encouraged to talk patients into choosing death over treatment in non terminal cases. A third argument is that euthanasia will become non-voluntary, which suggests that patients may feel pressured into "choosing" euthanasia by outside influences such as financial cost and social acceptance of suicide. Finally, opponents argue that euthanasia is a rejection of the importance and value of human life, which suggests that advocates of euthanasia are wrong by virtue of consensus because most of the world has rejected it throughout history.
It is fine to speculate about varying definitions of the word "terminal" and the broadening implications encompassed by it, but in a practical world, a legal definition will establish proper margins of "terminal". Furthermore, specific conditions would need to be met before euthanasia could be administered (Docker). Regardless of terminology, however, a person who has made repeated requests for euthanasia would make such issues moot.
For any law to exist it must have some form of oversight to avoid abuse. Any such oversight would need to criminalize coercion of patients to accept euthanasia over the cost of healthcare. The use of euthanasia as a profit-making tool of insurance companies is certainly criminal, but it is equally criminal to deny people a dignified death as an excuse for a failed healthcare system.
The argument that euthanasia will be a forced choice is a multipart argument. The first example given is: "[sic]
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Right to Live, Right to Die
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