Persuasive Essay Euthanasia

P3:2 “Assisted Suicide: Make Assisted Suicide Legal for the Terminally Ill In America,” a document written in English 1010 addresses legal and ethical issues of legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients and posits the question “assisted suicide mercy or murder.” Terminally ill patients should have the right to choose how and when they die. There are three reasons patients should have the right to choose death; the first, some patients experience uncontrollable pain; the second, loss of quality of life; the third, palliative care requires the direct intervention of a physician, but assisted suicide allows a physician to write a prescription and the patient chooses when they die. Although some patients have positive results with

The word suicide gives many people negative feelings and is a socially taboo subject. However, suicide might be beneficial to terminally ill patients. Physician- assisted suicide has been one of the most controversial modern topics. Many wonder if it is morally correct to put a terminally ill patient out of their misery. Physicians should be able to meet the requests of their terminally ill patients. Unfortunately, a physician can be doing more harm by keeping someone alive instead of letting them die peacefully. For example, an assisted suicide can bring comfort to patients. These patients are in excruciating pain and will eventually perish. The government should not be involved in such a personal decision. A physician- assisted suicide comes with many benefits for the patient. If a person is terminally ill and wants a physician assisted suicide, then they should receive one.

There are instances when people who are terminally ill or severely injured who want to terminate their own lives. Sometimes, due to the state of their injuries or conditions, those people are unable to end their own pain. It is in many of these cases that the patients request assistance in their suicides. This kind of request is like to happen in facilities where the patient receives long term or permanent care. Physician assisted suicide is a hotly contested issue. There is support for those who believe this kind of "assistance" is morally, ethically, and otherwise wrong. There is support from people who believe that a person has a right to choose when his/her life ends. These people believe that physician assisted suicide is a form of altruistic assistance. There are valid points made by people on both sides of this issue and there is certainly room within the debate to be undecided or to be conflicted. Secondary, tertiary, and long term providers/facilities have the power to improve the preservation of life and they have the power to assist with the end of life. The paper presents arguments of this debate and reflects upon the issues at the surface as well as the underlying issues of the debate over physician assisted suicide.

Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) has grown into quite a contentious topic over the years. According to Breitbart and Rosenfeld (1), physician-assisted suicide can be defined as “a physician providing medications or advice to enable the patient to end his or her own life.” One may find many articles that are written by physicians, pharmacists, patients, and family of patients who receive PAS; from there, it is possible to gain a better understanding of what PAS is and how it has become a rising issue in the United States. For readers who have not heard about PAS and what it entails, it is important to understand that this is a debatable topic that should be approached lightly and non-aggressively in the United States when factors such as offering terminally ill patients the right to end their suffering, the likelihood of overall healthcare cost to decrease, and the comparison of palliative care to physician-assisted suicide are examined.

A terminal disease diagnosis changes the outlook on life, leaving the choice of either living life to an inevitably painful death or ending the suffering by seeking a different medical option. A person who is terminally ill requires rigorous treatments to slow down the process of death, but there is an alternative option. Physician-assisted suicide continues to gain attention and is being legalized across the world. The process in the United States is slower, yet a few states have already authorized it. People undermine this option for unethical reasons; however, it enables a person in agonizing pain to end their life before becoming entirely incompetent. Doctors across the nation seek this practice in order to help the patients as well as their families; even though, they could be risking their license. Despite moral values contradicting this practice, physician-assisted suicide should be legalized across the United States for terminally ill patients lucid enough to make the decision on their own.

Radical assumptions have been made on whether or not physician-assisted death should be legalized in the United States because of its citizens’ uncertainty about this delicate subject. Physician-assisted suicide is the method by which an individual is provided with the drugs or equipment needed to commit suicide. The terms “aid in dying” or “death with dignity” are preferred over “suicide” due to their distinction from "suicide," where assisted or not, it remains illegal while “aid in dying” is permitted. This allows for the patient to have control over their life and have the right to be able to choose whether to live a life filled with tedious pain and/or suffering, or end their misery and be able to rest in peace.

It is the conclusion of Marcia Angell from the Supreme Court and Physician-Assisted Suicide in article #1 that a physician’s main duties are to respect a patient’s autonomy and relieve suffering. She believes even if this means assisting in a patient’s death. Her conclusion is based on several pretenses. First, the premise is the most ethical in medicine the respect for each patient’s autonomy. If this principle conflicts with others, it should always take precedence. She argues that sometimes physician’s need the option regarding hastening death, although this should be considered as a last resort. She considers that death is different for all and can be fast and peaceful or slow and cruel. She argues that death if withdrawing life-sustaining treatment simply allows the disease to take its course (Kaebnick, 2001). Three methods of hastening death are: withdrawing treatment to sustain life, assisting suicide, and euthanasia. Her concern about this is this is less patient-centered thinking and more physician centered? She further hopes that it will become a choice for those patients who need

It is obvious discussing physician-assisted suicide is a very controversial issue that is discussed daily by those who wish to die to avoid loss of dignity and also by those who think it is unethical. For physician-assisted suicide to even be considered, the patient must be of sound mind when they are requesting death with dignity. Physician-assisted suicide should be a legal option for people who are unable to end their own lives. However, there should be safeguards to prevent any sort of abuse. There should be the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, but not for active euthanasia. “It should never be contemplated as a substitute for comprehensive comfort care or for working with patients to resolve the physical, personal, and social challenges posed by the process of dying” (Meier, D.E., p. 294). If an incurable patient who is suffering asks for specific help in physician-assisted suicide, physicians should have the obligation to fully scrutinize the request. Not only is it the seriousness of considering medicine as the placement of certain suicide an issue, it is a form of direct killing. Medical advances are surely making it easier to reduce pain and suffering, so why should there be policies devised and sanctioned by the state to kill those in pain and suffering?

Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is the voluntary termination of one’s own life by the administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. The assistance of a physician for a terminally ill patient to commit their own suicide, has been a much debated topic in developed countries. It is a much bigger topic in developed countries than in developing countries due to the advances of medicine. It is argued that physician-assisted suicide shouldn’t be legalized because of religious and moral reasons. Additionally, PAS is incompatible with the doctor’s role as a healer. However, physician-assisted suicide should be legalized because patients should have the option to choose if they want to end their life. It is a way for people to be able to die with dignity and without indefinite suffering.

The right to assisted suicide is a controversial topic in healthcare in the United States. The debate goes back and forth about whether a dying competent patient has the right to die with the help of a physician. There is an abundant amount of people in the United States are against it because of religious beliefs. Some individuals believe that it is not morally right for a physician to assist in a patient’s death because it is not respecting the dying patient. Physician-patient assisted suicide divide physicians because many physicians differ when it comes to separating voluntarily killing a patient or killing the patient to respect their dying wish. Patients, who are gravely ill or in their final stages of life, often request for doctors to help them pass on by requesting medications such as morphine to help speed up their death because they are in pain. In healthcare, medical technology has come a long way to help lengthen a person’s life span. If a patient is actively dying from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), there are respiratory machines to aid in giving that patient oxygen to breath in more air which one could not achieve if the respiratory machine was not available to them. Medicine is intended to prevent diseases or allay the pain and suffering that a patient endures while going through medical treatments. Patients that are terminally ill should have the right to assisted suicide by a physician because it

The moral and ethical aspects of physician-assisted suicide are important ones that shouldn’t be overlooked.  In virtually all cases of assisted suicide the pain and suffering experienced by the patient is unrelievable.  Although it is important to go to great lengths to try and ease the suffering through traditional medicine, often times it’s just not enough.  When the traditional approach fails sometimes more drastic approaches are necessary.  One such measure that has come to be highly controversial in this decade is physician-assisted suicide.  This form of suicide is hotly debated because it isn’t just a mere suicide, but a planned out social contract between two or more people.  The basis for my argument for assisted suicide rests in the values of individual self-determination or autonomy and individual well-being.  Self-determination is central to the issue because a person should be able to choose how to live their life or in this case, how to die.

Assisted suicide has become a highly controversial issue over the last few years. The question left unanswered is: should people have the right to end their life with the help of a physician? Many are against the idea of aiding someone in dying. Doctors are some of the most vocal critics when it comes to assisted suicide. To doctors, helping someone end their life is incompatible with their role as a healer. However, there comes a point when a patient sees death as hope for relief, not an act of inhumanity. Until the doctor becomes the patient themselves, they see death as the worst possible outcome. But to a terminally ill patient, in critical care, death is the light at the end of a dark tunnel. Assisted suicide gives patients the right to die with dignity. No one wants to die, but when death becomes more valued than life, it should not be overlooked. Society should not get to decide if death is right or wrong. When a patient requests to end their life it is solely an act of desperation, as living becomes more painful than hopeful. Overall, legalizing assisted suicide is in the best interest of Canada because it reduces healthcare costs, exercises Canadians’ Charter Rights, and honours human morality; ultimately, society must realize that dying is not a crime if it means minimizing human suffering.

The article states that with the right safety measures in place, assisted suicide can help give terminally ill patients a sense of control over their lives as extreme pain and illness torture them. It suggests that instead of using our energies to convince patients who might want to end their lives while terminally ill or suffering horribly, physicians need to reassess how they can help patients achieve their goals when the end is near. We should be able to offer options for those who wish for assisted suicide, so that they can take control of their own death.

According the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Euthanasia is “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (such as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy. This procedure seems appealing to the many people around the world who suffer from terminal illnesses. In the minds of these people euthanasia or doctor-assisted suicide seems like the only escape. As stated in a journal, “My friend now believes that the only humane act would be to end her mother’s suffering. ‘Whats she is going through is cruel,’ she said. ‘She has no life.’” (Wheatley). This shows how sometimes people think that ending their life would be the only way

Image your closest friend is diagnosed with stage 5 liver cancer and suffers through monstrous pains every single day no matter how many painkillers they take. The doctors explain that your friend has less than six months to live. Your friend constantly mentions euthanasia to doctors, but the doctors refuse to perform it, because it is illegal. Think to yourself would you want your friend to suffer through six more months of intolerable pain? Many patients across the U.S. end their life miserably suffering great pains until their last breaths and do not have the option of euthanasia. That is why I stand on the firmest affirmation that euthanasia should be made legal across the U.S..