Our current laws and allocation of responsibility is not clear regarding the boundaries and intervention of government in certain situations. This is particularly true in regard to ethical individual choices such as physician assisted suicide or euthenasia. Although the Supreme Court has addressed an individual set of circumstances in the court decision of Cruz an vs. Harmon. The issues of physician assisted suicide as well as active and passive euthanasia have been debated for many years. this paper focuses on some of these topics and seeks to determine a resolution after significant discussion as formulated from research of the topic.
Specifically, the social paradigm of the conflicting perspectives and the manner in which they may be interpreted is considered. However the argument of an individual’s inherent “right” to live or die is limited by his or hers “right” to be born as it also involves the pros and cons of abortion which can not be additionally addressed in this paper. Thus the following discussion is limited to the state or federal governments right to interfere with a person of advanced age’s right to take his or her own life. It should be initially noted that the major issue regarding euthenasia relates to the subjective decision of when is an individual terminally ill (his projected time and quality of life remaining) or simply committing suicide with the assistance of a physician. Is it murder or not regardless of the manner in which it is committed? If it is legal to terminate life at birth is it also legal to terminate life at any other stage of life?