Death By Choice: Who Should Decide? Essay, Research Paper

Death By Choice: Who Should Decide?

McGuires’ references to prior cases and documents is done logically and

clinically. After careful reading, and re-reading, I failed to understand his position

on the moral issue.

How can he perceive that by terminating a human life, this is acceptable

moral behavior? Moral implies conformity to established codes or accepted notions

of right and wrong. In other words, the basic moral values of society. Since when did

society begin to accept that termination of life due to a dysfunction or deformity

is moral?

When did society decide that it is their “moral” obligation to determine when

the “quality of death” supersedes the “quality of life”? Who are they to decide what the

quality of life should be for that individual?

Morality is a standard of right behavior, sanctioned by ones conscience and

ethical judgment. How can any one person in society, using ethical judgment, decide

when the life of a child is no longer of importance?

McLaughlin refers to the killing ( word he used in his essay ), of person who

no longer has the capacity to exist within the quality of life standards. Who set those

standards? Society? When society decides who is fit to live and who is not, this is

manifesting themselves as “God”. This is morally unacceptable to me. We were not

put upon this Earth to act as God. We were placed here to do his work, but that does

not give us the free will to decide who lives and who dies. That is not our decision

to make. I , for one, do not want to have to supply an answer as to why I felt that a

disabled or dysfunctional person was not deemed acceptable to society.

My question still remains as to who takes the responsibility of determining

who deserves to live and die, based on “quality of life” ? Who created the standard of

quality? Shouldn’t that decision be based upon the individuals version, not of

societies ? Even if a person is born incapacitated, they were born for a reason. Who are

we too decide that the reason is of no consequence?

When our time to pass comes, that should be a decision made from a higher

power. Not a decision based upon what society has deemed acceptable.