I did a search on the words suicide and euthanasia, yet I couldn't find any threads on the topic. Surprising in a place like this.

To me, a person, if under a certain amount of suffering or in a perpetual comatose or vegatative state, should be able to either opt to end their life or have a guardian opt to end it for them. Sometimes death can come as a mercy, as I believe it did in this case. And, as a few of you will inevitably point out, it's a violation of a person's rights, not to mention complete futility to have a law against it anyway.

So, is euthanasia "right"? If so, under what circumstances?

This is an important issue, and there are many factors to be considered.

To my way of thinking, if there is no consciousness at all, and there is no possibility of consciousness ever returning (not always an easy thing to determine), then there is nothing immoral about allowing the patient's body to die. In such a situation, there is no "person" in the body; to my way of thinking, the individual is already dead. Hastening the death of the body with medications would also not be immoral.

When consciousness is present, there should be much greater restriction placed on the use of euthanasia. If the patient is capable of expressing the wish to die, the next step should be determining if the patient is in a state of extreme suffering which cannot be relieved by any means. If a team of qualified physicians agree that this is the case, I believe that the use of medications to kill the patient painlessly would not be immoral.

Things are not always so clear, of course. What if the patient is conscious but not able to express wishes clearly? (An example of the reason advance directives are important.) What if the suffering is not physical, but emotional? (For example, a patient who is totally paralyzed, as in the play "Whose Life Is It, Anyway?" In such a case, a patient who is not in physical pain may still believe that life is not worth living.) There are no easy answers.