Assisted Suicide Argumentative Essay

prescribe drugs to terminally ill patients who request to end their lives. Attorney General John

Brittany Maynard, a woman known for her advocacy in the controversial topic of assisted suicide, officially ended her life this fall after learning of her fatal brain tumor. After complaining of horrible headaches, she decided to see a doctor where they gave her this traumatic news. She had two corrective surgeries to try and stop the growth of her large tumor, but they were unsuccessful. Her doctor then suggested full brain radiation, but after months of researching this option, along with many other, she knew her quality of what short life she had left would quickly deteriorate. With the help of her family, friends, and newly-wed husband, she made the decision to move with her loved ones from her California home to Oregon, where death with

Everyone will die at some point, and many people wish to have a good death. The Institute of Medicine defines a good death as one that is free from avoidable stress and suffering for both the patient and family, and is in accord with family and patient wishes. Physician assisted suicide can help those who are terminally ill receive the good death that they wish to have. Physician assisted suicide allows patients to die on their own terms before suffering from their terminal illness becomes too much for them to bear. Jason Barber’s wife, Kathleen, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Both Kathleen and Jason believed in physician assisted suicide. Kathleen had watched her mother battle leukemia, and stated, “I wish there were a pill which would

According to Simon Jenkins, a writer for the British newspaper The Guardian, states that “there cannot be a human freedom so personal as ordering the circumstances of one's own death...[yet]... the near universal desire ‘to be allowed to die in my own home’ is willfully disregarded” (Jenkins 1). By allowing yourself to have life, one would assume that this gives you freedom over other aspects of your existence, including when it should end. By denying the rights to achieve liberty, achieve happiness, and define our lives, are we not denying the rights governments around the world were founded on? It is the denial of these rights that allows the mental stress felt by patients to turn into physical pain.

Physician-assisted suicide is the practice of providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life. Physician assisted suicide or PAS is different from euthanasia because with euthanasia, someone else’s causes death of the person. PAS the person his or her death. Physician-assisted suicide is the voluntary termination of one's own life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. According to the Death with Dignity National Center, in the 1900s, the first publicized assisted suicide was performed by Dr. Kevorkian in 1990 and again in 1998 when he showed the world a video of this act. He was convicted of murder in 1999. Also in 1990, the U.S Supreme court ruled in the Nancy Cruzan case that the “person has the right to refuse lifesaving medical services”, and her feeding tube was removed which ended her life shortly after. The patient self-determination act was passed which allowed patients to refuse or demand medical treatment.

"You have stage IV lung cancer that has metastasized to your lymph nodes and bones. Your prognosis is poor; you may have another 18 months left [to live]." The oncologist’s words marked the beginning of my ex-husband’s physical and emotional suffering until his untimely death in January 2017. Witnessing his unrelenting pain and watching him suffer from lung cancer and the horrible side effects of chemotherapy, I wondered why the doctors did not offer him any other alternatives other than living in progressive pain. Why would they let him suffer for the next 18 months with ineffective pain management treatment when his prognosis was so poor? This option should have been available to him, but due to state laws and

Brittany Maynard stated in an article she wrote on CNN, “Having this choice at the end of my life has become incredibly important. It has given me a sense of peace during a tumultuous time that otherwise would be dominated by fear, uncertainty and pain (Maynard, Brittany).” Since Brittany Maynard had gotten her prescription of euthanasia knowing that she could use it at any point she felt a sense of calm at the end of her life and felt that she could now die with dignity. The rest of her life didn’t have to be painful. Since she did have a terminal brain disease she had spent most of the last year of her life in tremendous pain, and once Brittany is refused treatment, she felt relieved. In contrast to Brittany’s story is the story of a woman named Pam Parlanti. This woman had unendurable arthritis pain near the end of her life and could barely get out of bed. Although she requested multiple times to die, her body held on for 11 days after her request and she died angry that others should have control over how she wanted to die (Parlanti, Steve). The story of Mrs. Parlanti proves that without the right to have voluntary doctor assisted suicide people will be forced to suffer for the remainder of their life even though the quality of their life is immensely poor. Family members watch their loved ones deteriorate this

For the most part, everybody throughout the world views life as sacred. In America, we see this in our laws which serve justice to those that have killed, and in our constitution alongside liberty and the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. It is generally agreed upon that most everybody would rather not die, and for that matter, would rather not see other people die as well. In short, barring serial killers and psychopaths, almost everybody supports life. However, when discussing the death and life of certain people, such as terminally ill patients and those sentenced to die by the court (capital punishment), a fair deal of disagreement arises. Within the politically fueled discussions that seem to dominate today’s discourse, we

Physician assisted suicide is a highly discussed topic in the medical world. Whether it should be legal or not is debated among medical professionals. There are multiple reasons someone may consider PAS (physician assisted suicide), but very few are actually granted the right to end their life with the help of a doctor. Physician assisted suicide, a well concerning and serious topic, is drastically debated in a vast amount of countries worldwide.

How does one know when a practice is morally sound or not? Is it the information that follows it? Is it the ethics involved in the situation? Is it the persons involved happiness or their autonomy? Constantly this question is being asked about every single medical decision out there. One of the most debated topics right now is physician assisted suicide. This is the idea that a doctor can prescribe medication to patients so they can pass away on their own terms. In the rest of the essay one will find what physician assisted suicide or death is and how it came to be. One will be able to learn a real life example of how it works in America right now and why it should be implemented all over the rest of the country. One will also

would you kill yourself if you were dying to put yourself out of misery? People in America are very upset that assisted suicide is legal in some states. A lot of Americans believe it is wrong and should be illegal. Should a person be able to kill them self if they want to? I believe they should, and that family members need to be willing to accept. If the fact of situation is if Love someone you should be willing to accept their decisive, even if you don’t agree with it.

Is one entitled to live his or her own life? In turn, is one entitled to choose his or her own death? If someone is already going to die in the next six months, should they be able to get help to end life early? This is the idea of assisted suicide-getting medical help to end a terminally ill patient’s life through euthanasia. Assisted suicide is a controversial topic because everyone has reasons to believe whether or not it should be legally allowed. Doctors and citizens have differing opinions because they're experiencing different perspectives and dilemmas. Death should be the patient's choice, and no one should be able to stop them from doing what they think is the right thing for their situation. (CC) Patients who are suffering with terminal

What if you were terminally ill, had no hope of getting better, and only had months, maybe even weeks, to live? Would you want the option to end your life early? This is the option of assisted suicide. Assisted Suicide is “suicide of a patient suffering from an incurable disease, affected by the taking of lethal drugs provided by a doctor for this purpose” (Dictionary.com). Assisted suicide should be legal in the United States. If you are terminally ill and have no chance of recovery you should have the option to end your life earlier. No one wants to suffer, it’s an awful and unbearable thing. Giving people that option will help take away some of the suffering and help them die with dignity. The people opposed to assisted suicide say it is unethical to kill a person though wouldn't making someone suffer be much worse.

Assisted suicide has been an argument over time; if people should be allowed to have the option. This was the question that was discussed by the supreme court in the cases of Washington v. Glucksberg on January 8, 1997. This case consisted of Dr. Harold Glucksberg, who is a physician. With four other physicians and three terminally-ill patients. Also helping them was a non-profit organization Compassion in Dying. They all challenged Washington State’s ban on assisted suicide. They argued that assisted suicide and the right to die was a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. I believe that any person who is in extreme pain and has a terminal illness should have the option of assisted suicide.

Physician assisted suicide is requested by the terminally ill, typically when the pain from the illness is too much to handle and is not manageable through treatments or other medications. Assisted suicide is more of a broad term for helping someone die a good death, physician assisted suicide is where a medical doctor provides information and medication and the patient then administers the medications themselves. Euthanasia is also another term that is commonly heard, this refers to a medical doctor that voluntarily administers the lethal dose of medication to the patient when the patient requests it, due to not physically being able to do it themselves (Humphry, 2006). There pros and cons with this topic throughout the world, but is one of the biggest debated things here in the United States of America and to this day there are only five states that have legalized physician-assisted suicide (ProCon.org, 2015). The government should allow patients that are terminally ill the right to choose physician assisted suicide, why should they have to suffer when there is a way out.