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i wrote a whole research paper in the 10th grade defending euthanasia, both passive and active (in a catholic school, no less!). the whole debate revolves around the question, who owns your life? if your existence is purely a "gift" from god or the like, than you have an obligation to remain on earth, and to take it, even in the most extreme of circumstances, would be patently immoral, as it would be "playing god" or "being ungrateful" or whatever. however, if you are master of your own destiny and your life belongs to you (as it does and should), then no other power may legitimately compel you to remain alive against your will. especially in situations in which someone is terminally ill and wishes to die (either by a DNR order or pressing a suicide button or the like), the fact that any government would deny one that right, generally citing religious authorities as justification no less, is utterly abominable; it's an absolute slap in the face to the whole "right to life" tenet on which virtually all of western political philosophy is based (for, if you have the right to direct the course of your life freely, and your death is obviously an integral part of your life, then it must follow that you have the right to freely direct the course of your death if you choose to do so). obviously, there are certain situations in which gratuitously offing oneself would in fact be immoral, but all that is outside any government's legitimate locus of control, because the government's only responsibility is to protect one's individual freedoms, not to uphold the collective moral fabric as it so often attempts (and almost uniformly fails) to do.
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