Physician Assisted Suicide Speech

Performing a physician assisted suicide is an act of great kindness, not murder as those against it would have one believe. It is compassionate to end people's suffering, especially when they have nothing to live for. When a patient is untreatable and in agony, then the only options is to treat the symptoms and make the patient more comfortable.

Physician-assisted suicide should be legal nationwide. As a former hospital employee, I know first-hand that some diseases can cause so much disability and pain that patients want to end their lives because they have had enough. Something dear to me is personal autonomy, a right of all people. If the patient is competent and wants to end their life, and a health care provider is willing to humanely help end that patient's life, then physician-assisted suicide should be legal and be performed, per the individual's wishes.

Physician assisted suicide (PAS) has been debated for many years now. Is physician assisted suicide right or is it wrong? Many people have very different views about this issue. Some supporters feel that people should have the moral right to choose freely what they will do with their lives as long as they do not harm others. This right of free choice includes the right to end one's life when they choose. While you have some supporters who oppose any measures of permitting physician assisted suicide argue that physicians have a moral duty to preserve all life. To allow physicians to assist in destroying someone’s life violates the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm." Opponents of physician-assisted suicide also believe that better pain management

Legalized physician assisted suicide. California, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington have made it legal by legislation, and Maine has made it legal by a court ruling. The remaining 45 states

According to a poll in 2015, 68% of United States residents believe that physician assisted suicide should be legal (“In”). Physician assisted suicide (PAS) gives terminally ill patients a way to end their lives peacefully before they die from whatever terminal illness they have. If physician assisted suicide became legal, many people would be saved from pain and anguish. On top of that, ill people could retain some power and control over their life. And though bringing money into the discussion might be crude, assisted suicide can save millions. Physician assisted suicide should be legal in order to ensure a dignified death for terminally ill patients.

Thirty six states have statutes that explicitly criminalize assisted suicide: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin. Eight states criminalize it through common law: Alabama, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Vermont, West Virginia. Three have abolished common law crimes and do not have statutes criminalizing assisted suicide: North Carolina, Utah, Wyoming. In Ohio, the state’s supreme court ruled in Oct 1996 that assisted suicide is not a crime. In Virginia, there is no real clear case law on assisted suicide, nor is there a statute criminalizing the act. However, there is a statute that imposes civil sanctions on person assisting in suicide. Oregon permits physician assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide is the suicide of a terminally- ill patient, achieved by using a prescribed drug from a doctor for that specific purpose. It is legal in only six states in the United States of America including: Oregon, Montana, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, and California. Countries such as Germany, Japan, and Switzerland have legalized assisted suicide in past years. It has been disputed for many years and continues to be a controversial issue whether physicians should be authorized to end an individual’s life with their prescription and if this should be done legally.

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.

Have you ever thought about how you are going to die? It might be from a heart attack fast and relatively painless or maybe it’ll be suffering slowly from cancer in a hospital bed. Physician-assisted suicide should be legal across America because it is a basic right of all American’s.

These states include Oregon, New Mexico, Montana, Vermont, and Washington that allow the help of a doctor to take away the life of the patient that decide to end their life and the pain that is causing the patient. For example, pharmacist and doctors instruct the patient how to take the dosage of the prescribed drug. So. if in a case that patient don’t know how to take the drug and need help the patient can do it with the help of a professional health care. Physician assisted suicide is similar to assisted suicide because both are taking the life away, but the main the difference is it may be held or not held responsible of the action. Since most of the states don’t allow this, people actually move to those states that do allow it to end their painful lives and not having to suffer anymore. In the states that do allow it have certain requirements to be met in order to be qualified to take this action and additional requirements. In most states, the law of physician assisted suicide are similar and have the same requirements that need to be adhered. These requirements include, patient must be 18 years or older, resident of that state in which they live in, patient must be capable of doing this action, diagnosed with a terminal disease that is within the months to live. Some states may have other requirements to do this action and the time in which the patient will live. Oregon for

I do believe Physician-assisted suicide is morally ethical and should become a more universally accepted idea. The good it can provide one and their family absolutely outweighs the bad. There are so many benefits of P.A.S., not that killing someone is such a great thing, but if it is an option to a terminally ill patient in pain it should be considered. A patient may be suffering at the end of their life and Physician-assisted suicide is

One argument is that every person should be free enough to make their own medical decisions. However, in the case of physician assisted suicide, a patient’s decision is influential on medical professionals, family, friends, and other patients (Boehnlein, 1999). Also, there may be an unconscious influence by people in the patient’s lives (Boehnlein, 1999). The patient might even be depressed, and therefore, cannot be fully competent of making this type of decision (Boehnlein, 1999). If a person is depressed, they are in a different state of mind. They may be feeling helpless, and PAS seems to be the only way out. In the end, it is the physician’s decision. One can see how this puts a lot of pressure on the physician. Physicians are humans too, which means they make mistakes. If a patient is being assessed by a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist must decide if the patient actually wants to end their life, or if it is a cry for help (Boehnlein, 1999). Also, it is the psychiatrist’s duty to assess risk factors for suicide because, “Not only is this standard ethical psychiatric practice, but we can be sued if we do not take appropriate steps to screen for, or prevent, suicide” (Boehnlein, 1999, p. 11). The burden on physicians and psychiatrist is very heavy and such a decision is something that has to be very carefully made. Every aspect has to be looked

Introduction I. Attention-getter: “On New Year’s Day 2013, after months of suffering from unbearable headaches, your family member learned that they had brain cancer. This family member was 29 years old, just married over a year ago, and was hoping to start to build a family. Every day the lives of this couple involved hospital stays, doctor consultations and medical research” (Brittany Maynard). A. “Nine days after the initial diagnoses, your family member have a partial craniotomy and a partial resection of their temporal lobe, both an effort to stop the growth of the tumor growing inside their head” (Brittany Maynard). 1.

A dead man walking, but yet you have to keep on walking till you take your last breathe. Weak, unhealthy, and already a part of the deceased, you can’t end your own life and neither can your physician. My grandfather was recently in the hospital for terminal cancer with multiple lymph nodes in his throat with excruciating pain every time he coughed, I wondered why they couldn't just let him go if he was going to die soon anyways. Already dying soon, unbearable pain, and being bored counting the colorful blocks on the curtain, wouldn’t you want to go to paradise too?

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.