Persuasive Essay On Active Voluntary Euthanasia

Physician-assisted suicide is controversial in healthcare and political realms alike. Currently, this end-of-life option is practiced in five states within the United States. Social concerns regarding assisted suicide revolve around ethical quandaries; providing the means to a patient’s death is contradictory to ethical principles of healthcare providers. Political concerns surrounding the legalization of assisted suicide include disparities in healthcare that may lead to certain populations choosing assisted suicide and the stagnation of current care options. While there is no succinct manner in which to declare assisted suicide right or wrong, each individual must address the social and political concerns surrounding the issue when voting for legislation to legalize assisted suicide or pursuing the option for themselves.

Is physician assisted suicide ethical? Physician assisted suicide is an up and coming ethical question that examines a person’s right to their own death. Many people support physician assisted suicide, citing that it can save a lot of pain and suffering. Others claim that the concept of physician assisted suicide is a slippery slope. A slippery slope in the sense that if society accepts euthanasia as a rightful death for the terminally ill, they will potentially accept it for other ailments as well.

In 1990, physician-assisted suicide became well known around the United States when Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, assisted a 54-year-old Alzheimer’s patient end her life. He would go on to willfully help dozens of terminally ill people end their lives. He spent eight years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 130 ailing patients whose lives he helped end (Kevorkian, 2011). Many consider him a hero, setting a platform for reform. In 1997 Oregon lawmakers approved a statue, Death with Dignity, making it legal for doctors to prescribe lethal doses of a medication to help terminally ill patients end

Physician assisted suicide is also called euthanasia. It is a highly debated topic on whether it should be legal or not. Some states have taken different stands on this question, some making it legal to do. I believe that every citizen who is suffering from a degenerative, painful or fatal condition, should have the right to decide if they want the option of a physician assisted suicide. I believe in a society such as ours we should all have the right to die with some kind of dignity.

The Death with Dignity Act, which was accepted by Oregon in 1977 has allowed 1,173 people to receive prescriptions and 752 people have used them to die from physician assistance (Egan 2015). These numbers are very important to consider. Allowing people to simply have the option to use the medicine to end their life, having it at their dispense, gives the patients the feeling that they have some control, and aren’t so helpless. These patients often feel like they have no control over their life anymore. The sickness is slowly killing them, and the option of physician-assisted suicide allows them to have control of one significant part of their life.

In the United States, physician assisted suicide is legal in six states. People from other countries will come, or bring dying family members, to these states to give them the relief that they ask for. Oregon was the first state to pass their Death with Dignity Act in 1994. Washington, Vermont, California, Colorado all followed suit, two just legalizing it in 2016. Montana’s supreme court, during Baxter v. Montana, ruled there were no laws making physician assisted suicide illegal. In addition to these six states, District of Columbia has passed their Death with Dignity Act in 2017. Every state has had bills in their congress debating whether to legalize physician assisted suicide. It has been estimated that a thousand people, in any state,

Do no harm. This used to be the heart of all medicine. But now our public is introducing just the contrary of this. When physician-assisted suicide becomes legal throughout the United States, no longer will we be stumbling on the fact that someday, somewhere, and somehow we will die unexpectedly or possibly expectedly, with everything the doctors could do to save us; but now we can die on our own guidance. Physician-assisted suicide is a debated subject that often divides the public between those who support it versus those who oppose it. There are some individuals who believe that patients suffering from chronic and fatal illnesses should be allowed to die on their own terms and in peace. And there are some individuals who oppose

Thesis: Physician Assisted Suicide is sometimes misunderstood due to how it is termed, but this is something that needs to be deeply evaluated and legalized in all 50 states.

Did you know that more than 300 terminally ill people a year commit suicide in England, a country that prohibits physician assisted suicide? Physician assisted death is committed with the aid of another person, usually with lethal injections like fluids through IVs or shots, to help end suffering in those whose pain and/or diseases cannot be healed. By making physician assisted suicide legal, we can reduce the pain of those individuals who suffer in some circumstances. In the states of Oregon, Montana, Washington, New Jersey, and Vermont, this option is already legal, but many more states still need to come to this decision so that chronically ill and suffering people can choose to end their misery and pain rather suffer long and drawn out painful deaths.

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary the definition of physician-assisted suicide is, “suicide by a patient facilitated by means or information (as a drug prescription or indicated of the lethal dosage) provided by a physician who is aware of how the patient intends to use such means or information.” I believe that some forms of euthanasia are moral given the premise that the patient is suffering from an incurable and painful disease and will die in the next few months. Given these exceptional circumstances, physician assisted suicide is permissible granted that the patient as well as the immediate family are motivated by ending the patient’s suffering. There have been many arguments about the legality and the morality of physician-assisted suicide and I believe that it is legal and moral under certain circumstances.

The field of medicine is continuously growing each and everyday. However, there are many terminal illnesses even the experts cannot cure yet. There are options for those living under these deadly conditions, including lifetime medications, palliative care and for those near the end of life, hospice. Among those forms of treatment, there is an alternative to relieve suffrage that some would much more prefer. This is the idea of physician-assisted suicide, which can also be referred to as active euthanasia or mercy killing. According to author of “Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide” and part owner of Medical News Today and Market Business News, Christian Nordqvist, physician-assisted suicide refers to the intentional hastening of death by a terminally ill patient with assistance from a

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.

In 1939 Adolf Hitler initiated a program called “Aktion 4”, the first step towards genocide. The purpose of this program was to eliminate “life unworthy of life”. At first, only sick and disabled children under the age of 3 were a subject to be euthanized. Eventually, it was used as a tool to get rid of “undesirables”: those who did not posses German citizenship or were not of a “master race”, including Jews, Negroes, and Gypsies. What started as a “mercy killing”, ended 3 years later with the extermination camps of the Holocaust. Almost six million innocent people resulted from what was considered a humane act. Only five decades later, new euthanasia movements emerged in Europe. In the Netherlands, euthanasia has been at the center of public debate since the early 1970s. Today, euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands and several other countries, including Belgium and Switzerland. Does history not teach us at all? Some may say that comparing Hitler’s genocide practices to modern euthanasia is too radical. However, according to a study, 30% of all cases in the Netherlands are done without a patient’s consent. In 70% of which this decision is not discussed with a patient.

The debate over the use of euthanasia is ever growing. This is due to the fact of constant increases in medical advances. Medical advances are growing the number of medicines one can be given before palliative care is an option. The main concern of the debate is whether trying new treatments and medicines are necessary before palliative care is given. Two articles will be analyzed using the Aristotelian method. Both articles are valid, but the New York Times article written by Haider Javed Warraich offers a complete perspective using all three persuasive appeals compared to the article written by Terry Pratchett for The Guardian, which the majority is written on emotion.

Euthanasia is prohibited in 50 states under the homicide law (shah) This fact is often questioned by people because they hear about euthanasia on the daily. But to fully grasp the idea of euthanasia readers must understand the background and get a grasp of the meaning.