Kantian Ethics and Euthanasia

I believe that euthanasia, allowing someone to die, is morally permissible in certain situations. However, killing someone who is suffering is morally wrong in my opinion. For this argument my definition of a suffering person is someone who is in a great deal of pain, is being kept alive by medicine, feeding tubes, or life support, and has no chance of recovery. Although some may disagree, I feel that allowing someone to die and killing someone are two completely different things. So for the sake of my argument I will define euthanasia as “the act or practice of allowing a hopelessly sick or injured patient to die by taking less than complete medical measures to prolong life”(dictionary.com), because I do believe that actually killing someone is wrong. I agree with Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory. I also have been brought up to believe that good will is important. I consider myself as somewhat as a Kantian, and will use parts of Immanuel Kant’s theory to help my argument.

Like I said before allowing someone who is suffering to die is morally permissible, perhaps in some situations even a moral obligation. I believe based on his theory Immanuel Kant would agree with me. Allow me to share a story that I believe will illustrate my point and will also show how I came to have this belief. A few years back I was working in a nursing home as a nursing assistant. On the unit where I worked there was a resident in their late 90s. This resident suffered from severe dementia, diabetes, severe arthritis, and could not walk. One night this resident was confused and tried to get out of bed without assistance and suffered a bad fall. This fall left them in bed and the resident was in great pain even with the strong pain medication. A few weeks later the same resident, whom was still confined to bed, suffered from a stroke. The resident quit talking completely and refused to eat. A doctor confirmed that this resident would never recover and suggested that they be put on comfort measures only, meaning that there are no attempts at prolonging life, only pain management and other comfort measures. This resident’s power of attorney got angry at this and demanded that efforts were taken to keep the resident alive, so a feeding tube was put in. The resident continually tried to pull the feeding tube out so they were put in restraints. I, along with my fellow nursing staff, felt that it was cruel to keep this person alive. Thankfully the power of attorney decided for whatever reason to allow the feeding tube to come out and the resident passed away the next day. The feeding tube was prolonging the resident’s life, but also prolonging their pain and suffering. Therefore in situations like this I feel that it is morally permissible to allow nature to take its course and allow someone to die. I believe that this could be a universal law. Allow me to use Kant’s principle of the “categorical imperative” to illustrate. Whenever someone is suffering (see my definition of a suffering person from the first paragraph) it is morally permissible to allow them to die by not taking any medical means of prolonging their life. I believe that as long as the motive is to end someone’s suffering and not anything else, that euthanasia (how I defined it in the first paragraph) is morally right.

My values have come from my parents, my friends, and different life experiences. My feelings regarding euthanasia come from personal experiences including the story from above. I believe that my motives are good and I try to act on good will in my life. If I was ever suffering I pray that my family would respect me enough to allow me to die naturally.