MORAL ISSUES OF THE SOCIETY
EUTHANASIA
Another moral issue
which we are facing nowadays or people are still arguing about is the Issue of Euthanasia. Etymologically in the Greek language, euthanasia means “good death”. Also known as “mercy killing”, it is intentional taking of the life of an ailing person, for any of the reasons like incurability of illness, unbearable intensity of physical or emotional pain, unbearable financial burden arising from the illness.
There are people who are in favor about such issue. But in my own opinion or self-understanding, it is not a favorable one. Why? The contention that the passive euthanasia may be ethically allowed so as not to prolong the suffering of the incurable patient is an example of the end or aim ( to relieve the patient of pain and suffering ) justifying an illicit means ( taking the life of an innocent human being.) No amount of compassion can ever justify an act that seeks to take the life of the innocent. Such is the nature of euthanasia, whether active or passive. It is intrinsically wrong, since it rejects life. Life is a good, a value. But it is not the highest good that one must pursue by all means. There is a limit to its pursuit. Even the ailing and the health care provider are bound by this limit. Reasonably, therefore, when the nature of treatment is extraordinary, neither the sick may seek it at all costs, nor the physician may provide it by all means. This is ethically acceptable. There is an immense difference between seeking the death of a patient by withdrawing or omitting treatment willfully (as in passive euthanasia) and the act of rejecting only the extraordinary means of treatment, even when it is life-sustaining. In the former, the aim is to seek the death of an innocent human being; in the latter, the aim is to forego the extraordinary means of treatment, not to reject life. ABORTION
Abortion is one of the moral issues which people are still debating. Abortion is simply the termination of pregnancy , which begins at the moment of conception , when the sperm fertilizes the egg, and ends at birth of the child. There is only one reason, common to all who seek abortion. And this is unwanted pregnancy. People are divided when it comes to this issue—the pro-choice(pro abortion) position and the pro-life (anti –abortion) position. But if I were to choose among the two positions I would prefer to be in the Pro-life (anti-abortion). It is simply because it maintains that taking an innocent human life is intrinsically wrong. In its stand for human life, pro-life position finds untenable the arguments made by the pro-choice. What I am trying to say is that the denial that the zygote, the fertilized egg, is simply not a person because it has yet to develop and grow into one, and cannot be, therefore, the subject of the right to live is absurd. For then no one ever becomes a person because everyone is in the process of constant development and growth. Just as it is ridiculous to speak of a “partial” guava tree for the simple reason that it is not yet fully developed, so also it is when the child, the teenager, and the young are called partial human persons only because they are still in the process of growing up and attaining the full maturity. Then only the elderly have full rights for they alone are the “full”persons, having stopped developing, at least, physically. But they too, cannot be ‘full” persons for even in their old age they do still develop emotionally and intellectually. The presumption , therefore, should be that at the moment of conception, there is already a person, a developing person whose first right –the right to live – must be protected and defended. Since the fetus is human and its life is separate from the mother’s, all care must be taken to ensureits health.Write your abstract here.