Terri Schiavo was a Florida woman who had suffered brain damage and had been in a coma since the early 1990s. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, feeling guilty after seeing his wife in a hospital bed, managed to get her feeding tube removed. Unbeknownst to Terry's parents, they later fought a legal battle in court to convince doctors to put the tube back in, but lost. In 2005, Schiavo died, two weeks after the tube was removed. Schiavo was a human being like any of us in an uncontrollable situation, lying on a hospital bed. Her husband, knowing he would likely never see his wife again, undertook the difficult task of ending her life, allowing her to die without facing more misery. It is in moments like these that the question arises: is euthanasia mercy or murder? Euthanasia, or “mercy killing,” involves strategically ending the life of a sick person in a painless way. There has been a lot of discussion about this around the world in recent decades. Some European countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, have some divisions of euthanasia that are considered legal. In other countries where euthanasia is strictly prohibited, the courts decide not to punish those who practice it. There are two main types of euthanasia: active euthanasia (doctors or nurses giving the sick patient a medicine that will kill him) and passive euthanasia (refusing to give the necessary treatment/meals). In some cases, the life support machine is turned off and patients slowly succumb to their pain. Sometimes you decide not to feed them anymore. The main problem in all this is who decides if and when to carry out euthanasia: the doctors, the family or the patient. Is it sometimes the... middle of paper... an unbalanced thought process or a simple logical decision in mentally ill patients? What if the individual choosing assisted suicide as an option and the family disagree? In some cases it is not clear whether the sick person really wants to die. Euthanasia, in my opinion, should only happen if a person truly wants to commit or fully understands how sick they are. Works Cited http://eutanasia.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001289http:// www.lifenews.com/2013/11/18/euthanizing-the-unhappy-the-urgent-need-for- love/http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/09/25/palliative-care-versus- euthanasia/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200http:// www.assistedsuicide.org/suicide_laws.htmlhttp://www.elon.edu/e-web/pendulum/ Issues/2005/11_10/opinions/eutanasia.xhtmlhttp://www.statisticbrain.com/eutanasia-statistics/