A. Attention getter :
Imagine yourself being unable to walk, unable to see, and can barely breathe let alone speak. Your life was well lived all those years before. You are in such unbearable pain that you can’t even cry. Although your family is there for your every step of the way you begin to think, could ending your life be the answer to the pain?
You are in more pain than you can bear. There is no way that you could function without assistance. You think and feel as if your life has no meaning. Well in all reality this isn’t something anyone needs to imagine. This is a real situation for many, many people. These people should be able to make their own choices and have control of their own lives.
B. Background information of the topic: Euthanasia is a term still new to many of us. It is a Greek term meaning ‘ good death’. It means self imposed death in a relatively painless and merciful way. Euthanasia is categorized in different ways, which include voluntary, non-voluntary, or involuntary and active or passive.
Euthanasia is usually used to refer to active euthanasia, and in this sense, euthanasia is usually considered to be criminal homicide, but voluntary, passive euthanasia is widely non-criminal.
C. Preview of the speech (central idea): Now let’s take a look at the reasons on why euthanasia should be legalized. Euthanasia is about giving people the right to choose how they want to live and die, saves money in medical bills, and it also stops the person from having a bad quality of life.
Supporting details:
First of all, deciding if you want to be alive or not is a personal decision. Neither the doctors nor the government has the power to decide if you should live or not. Since it is not their life and they are not in your situation, they cannot make that kind of decision for you. It might sound like suicide, but again, that is our problem, not theirs. They give us the liberty to decide our job, our family, our religion, and even our sex preference. Why should they not give us the right to decide if we want to live or not? That should be the first right before all the ones I have mentioned. It is not logical that we can choose in all those other decisions if we cannot first choose to live or die.
Supporting details:
It has been argued that for people on life support systems and people with long standing diseases causing much pain and distress, euthanasia is a better choice. It helps in relieving them from pain and misery. In cases like terminal cancers when the patient is in much pain and when people associated with them also are put through a lot of pain and misery, it is much more practical and humane to grant the person his/her wish to end his/her own life in a relatively painless and merciful way.
Next, comes the economic factor. Many times we do not have enough money to pay for the needed medical care not knowing if the patient is going to get any better. In a way, we are just spending time and money on a situation that won’t get better. Imagine, they are in great suffer and we are paying to make it longer. So if the patient wants euthanasia, why not do it if we cannot end the huge amount of money wasted on a treatment that won’t help, but worsen it instead. ii. Supporting details
For those who are terminally ill, they do not want to be an emotional and financial burden to their relatives, therefore without their existence; they would be lightening their family’s burdens. Initially it may be unfair to their families but in the long run, their decision to give up on life would help their families greatly. Their families would then not be burdened by the hefty medical bills and the emotional strain of care giving. * Here, I would stop to show another picture of a person to my audience with a short explanation.
