Euthanasia

In the year 1976, Karen Ann Quinlan collapsed in an unconscious state after consuming alcohol and Valium at a party.   She entered an irreversible coma. When Quinlan was admitted into St. Clare’s hospital in New Jersey, she was in a very deep form of unconsciousness called a persistent vegetative state and her eyes were disconjugate, meaning they no longer moved in the same direction together.   Over the next few months, her weight dropped to under eighty pounds and she was given artificial nutrition through a nasogastric feeding tube and a ventilator to help her breathe.   After watching their daughter suffer for several months, her parents couldn’t bear to see their daughter like that anymore and so they decided to ‘pull the plug’ and remove her from the respirator. However, Quinlan’s doctors objected.   This initiated the first ‘right to die’ case to ever come before a United States court. Passive euthanasia is now legal in the United States today, and the affirmative team believes that active euthanasia should be legalized in all fifty of the United States as well. Active euthanasia is when the doctors provide the fatal drugs to the patient to end his/her life.
Contention 1: Harms
Subpoint A: The illegalization of euthanasia prolongs physical and psychological suffering of helpless patients.   Euthanasia, published in 1999, by James D. Torr, “Laws against euthanasia are not only unjust because they violate individual privacy, but they are also malicious and unconscionable because they prolong a person's suffering against his or her will.”   Take Karen Ann Quinlan as an example, she had severe brain damage and her eyeballs didn’t even function correctly, it was clear she was suffering, but no one could do anything about it.  
Subpoint B: Also, forcing people to continue living their lives against their will is completely unethical.   In November 2010, Dr. Maisie Miller, MD (Pediatrics in Fort Worth, TX) said in an article published on Buzzle, “maintaining life... [continues]

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