Hannah+x2

=**Hannah x2: Euthanasia - Australia vs USA **=

What is Euthanasia?
Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. Voluntary Euthanasia refers to the action taken by the physician and the patient, who both agree (with informed consent) to end the patient's life. Involuntary Euthanasia refers to a third party taking a patient's life without the informed consent of the patient. This is commonly practiced in veterinary medicine when animals are "put down" or "put to sleep". In modern medicine, it could conceivably be applied to the act of taking a terminally ill, suffering patient's life who has lost all mental capacity to make his/her own decisions.



Why is it an ethical issue?
Euthanasia raises a number of agonising moral dilemmas: - is it ever right to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is undergoing severe pain and suffering? - under what circumstances can euthanasia be justifiable, if at all? - is there a moral difference between killing someone and letting them die?

At the heart of these arguments are the different ideas that people have about the meaning and value of human existence: Should human beings have the right to decide on issues of life and death?

There are also a number of arguments based on practical issues: Some people think that euthanasia shouldn't be allowed, even if it was morally right, because it could be abused and used as a cover for murder.



<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Euthanasia in America
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Euthanasia is now legal in the United States. Physician aid in dying (PAD), or assisted suicide, is legal in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont and Bernalillo County, and New Mexico. The key difference between euthanasia and PAD is who administers the lethal dose of medication. Euthanasia entails the physician or another third party administering the medication, whereas PAD requires the patient to self-administer the medication and to determine whether and when to do this. Attempts to legalise PAD resulted in ballot initiatives and "legislation bills" within the United States of America in the last 20 years. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Debates about the ethics of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide date from ancient Greece and Rome. In 1870, Samuel Williams first proposed using anaesthetics and morphine to intentionally end a patient's life. Over the next 35 years, debates about euthanasia raged in the United States which resulted in an Ohio bill to legalise euthanasia in 1906, a bill that was ultimately defeated.

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<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Euthanasia in Australia
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Euthanasia, or voluntary assisted suicide, has been the subject of much moral, religious, philosophical, legal and human rights debate in Australia. At the core of this debate is how to reconcile competing values: the desire of individuals to choose to die with dignity when suffering, and the need to uphold the inherent right to life of every person. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Several legislative attempts have been made to legalise euthanasia in parts of Australia. However, at present, it remains unlawful. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">One of these attempts was the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 (NT), which allowed for medically assisted voluntary euthanasia at the request of a terminally ill person. This Act is discussed in Human Rights and Euthanasia, an occasional paper which examines the relationship between euthanasia and international human rights law. Shortly after this paper was published, the federal Parliament made Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 (NT) inoperative by amending the Federal Parliament of the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act 1978 (Cth).

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<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Comparison
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">From the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of England and Wales in 1995, the Northern Territory of Australia became the first legislature in the world to pass a law for voluntary euthanasia. This came into effect on July 1st 1996. Four Australians, all dying from cancer, legally received the help of a doctor to a peaceful death, before the Federal Parliament overturned the Act in March 1997. This is similar to America's laws. While active euthanasia is illegal throughout some states in the US, it's legal in Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, one county in New Mexico, and in Montana.

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<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">By Hannah Tebbutt & Hannah Smith