Is Euthanasia or Mercy Killing Wrong or a Sin?

O Learned and Devoted Servants of God,

[Smt. Priyanka Sethepalli asked: When a cancer patient at the hospital is told by a doctor that with a lot of effort, they can extend their life span by 6 more months or a year but the patient opts for no more suffering from chemotherapy or any other types of medical interventions and choses to lead the remaining life to do what he/she likes and in other terms, chooses not to fight to live longer and makes peace with upcoming death, is it considered wrong? Should such a patient always choose to fight as hard as they can to survive? Is this patient supposed to accept this suffering as a consequence of previous birth sins and go through it so that nothing is carried forward to his next birth?

If a patient is in coma and their family is asked to sign papers to end the patient’s life, is it wrong if they do so. Nobody knows if the patient will ever come out of coma or not. Some people cannot afford the medical bills. Can humans decide in such a case whether or not to end another person’s life.

Some people who own pets, chose to end their pet’s life because they cannot bear to see their pet’s suffering. But, is it acceptable to God for a human to go to a vet to end their pet’s life or should a pet owner let the pet suffer?]

Swami replied: 1) The implementation of one possibility among various alternative options depends on the individual case. Finally the practical implementation is based on the specific nature of a sin done by the soul either in the past birth or sometime back in the present birth also. As per the Gita, the individual soul is born everyday and hence, everyday can be taken as new birth (if you don’t believe rebirth). If the judgement of God is that a soul shall experience mercy killing, it takes place so. If the conclusion of the sin is that the soul shall suffer without mercy killing, it happens so. We cannot generalize anything applicable to all the souls because the sins were done by all the souls in different lives with different angles of intentions. The nature of the punishment of a specific sin is its exact reflection having the same modes of twists. One punishment differs from another punishment by a very narrow margin since such marginal difference exists in their source sins. It is said that Mahatma Gandhi advised mercy killing of a cow in its complicated delivery causing immense suffering to the cow. People say that as a fruit of that intensive sin (intensive deeds give fruits in this birth itself), he was also shot dead. The analysis of deeds and qualities in the form of intentions is very very deep and very very complicated by the interference of various subtle parameters. The correct judgement can come only from the omniscient God. Whatever is happening in a case shall be taken as the final conclusion of God. In the case of this deeply complicated cycle of deeds and punishments as said in the Gita (Gahanaa karmano gatih), the conclusion is not so simple as expected by you since the conclusion is highly specific with a three dimensional network of several subtle parameters seen as well as unseen. Whatever happened finally is always as per the sharp conclusion given by God. We can get some approximate analysis of the action done by analyzing the given judgement of God as the fruit of that action. Reverse is not possible for our limited intelligence.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★