Euthanasia's Dilemmas

Is euthanasia just? Or is it criminal? Euthanasia is where a person has someone help them die. It's somewhat similar to pulling the plug on a patient in need of life suppoert, except the patient decides actively when to die. The dilemmas involved deal mostly with the mental status of the recipients. Many people would agree that the laws are there to help stop people from making their last mistake. Many others, however, would question how anyone else has the right to decide that for them. Take, for example, a loved one with terminal pancreatic cancer. This loved one is almost certainly going to die, and it will be a painful one. Do they not have the right to choose to avoid it? Or must they endure a painful death because they're not seen as mentally competent in the eyes of others? Take another example: a loved one winds up comatose, diagnosed by multiple doctors with a very low chance of waking up. Traditionally, unless the patient has an order for what their wishes are, their spouse, their executor, or family decides the patient's fate, without the loved one's active consent or dissent. But why is that any better of an option than someone deciding for themselves? If the person deciding was close to the patient, they will most likely have great difficulty making a decision based in logic and reason. So I ask, how is it any different for a person in bad mental health to decide their fate? Or for a person faced with an extremely painful death to choose another path? In almost any scenario, the deciding parties will be in no mental condition to decide logically. Ultimately, it will come down to situational details, personal beliefs, and legality, but, barring that, just consider this: who has the right to decide whether or not someone may chose to die? Does it rest with the recipient? Or with others? Leave me comments with your opinion!!