Euthanasia not an answer to suffering
Dehumanization results from simplistic solutions like death penalty, abortion

Let’s say that the front door to your house is falling off its hinges. A simple solution would be to fix the hinges.

A simplistic solution, however, would be to rip the door off its hinges or to board up the doorway. Ripping the door off is the quickest and easiest solution, but it would also mean that anyone could just walk right into your house. Boarding up the door would prevent others from entering your home, but it would also prevent you from leaving (which you might need to do at some point).

The point of this analogy is that we must not make synonymous a simple solution and a simplistic solution. Knowing the difference is very important when it comes to deciding on a course of action — especially if someone’s life is riding on that choice.

This brings me to my topic of the legalization of euthanasia (which the Netherlands recently did). Most arguments favoring legalization tend to concentrate on the easing of the suffering of those who are in excruciating pain and are terminally ill.

I am aware that some people will suffer — a few severely — before they die, and I am certainly not in favor of letting anyone suffer any more than necessary before death comes. However, we must be aware that the terminally ill patients and their loved ones are emotionally vulnerable during this time.

Emotional vulnerability is a fertile ground for people to be pressured into decisions that otherwise wouldn’t be made. There are many complications to the legalization of euthanasia, the most prominent of which is the lack of respect for the sacredness of human life, which seems to be gradually gaining ground in our modern culture.

The United States has already accepted the death penalty and abortion, both of which view death as a simple solution to complex situations tied to both of these issues. The problem is that the death penalty and abortion are simplistic and not simple solutions.

The death penalty does not eliminate crime nor the causes leading to the commissions of crimes. Abortion does not eliminate the circumstances that led to the pregnancy in the first place, and worse, it fatally punishes an innocent party.

Supporters of abortion and the death penalty usually dehumanize those eliminated by their respective causes (the unborn and criminals respectively) to justify their positions, but dehumanization is not a noble path to take for the justification of a cause.

The use of euthanasia as a solution is simplistic in that it ends the existence of the patient’s suffering by ending the existence of the patient. As well, in order to justify the use of euthanasia, we will have to dehumanize those close to death as having “a life not worth living.”
We can cloak it with euphemistic terms as “death with dignity,” but it is still a form of dehumanization. When we start basing our decisions on the dehumanization of others, we start down a path taken by Nazi Germany. Is that the sort of example we want to follow?
End-of-life issues and decisions are wrapped in social and emotional complexities, and the last thing we need to do is to rush into decisions that we may regret later. As the analogy above demonstrates, sometimes rushing into simplistic solutions will leave you worse off than when you started.
Fixing a door falling off its hinges requires knowing how to repair it. Such knowledge requires a little patience and understanding in order to do the job right, and that is what end-of-life issues require as well. Above all, respect for the humanity of the patient must remain intact at all times. It is only with such respect intact that a person can truly “die with dignity.”

John P. Araujo is a graduate student from Fort Worth.
He can be reached at (j.araujo@student.tcu.edu).

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