Rhetorical Analysis

Brittany Maynard was a woman terminally ill with cancer and made a decision to end her life with dignity. Topics include her family views, her struggles with a cancerous tumor, mention of her plan to die, and the controversy surrounding her right to die. Maynard had great influence surrounding the right-to-die movement. This essay will also include the topic of state laws that have signed the bill for patients that are terminally ill that choose to end their lives. This article includes the views of those who perceive this right as assisted suicide.

Death is inevitable, but do we ride it out until the bitter end or chose a quick and painless death? Many people are against the idea of physician-assisted suicide and others aren’t such as Faye Girish writer of the article “Should Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legalized?” Published in 1999 in Insight on the News, she argues that the legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide will allow those who wish to die a peaceful way to do so. Faye establishes the building of her credibility with plausible facts and statistics, great emotional appeal, and personal sources. However, throughout the article several times she attempts to use pity to guilt people into agreeing with her argument, uses celebrities as sources, and doesn’t cite some of her sources questioning her credibility and finally, her argument.

Schencker in the article, demonstrates that patient assisted suicide has opened a discussion for more options regarding palliative and hospice care. She stated that although PAS is heart wrenching and emotion provoking, palliative and hospice care is a growing concern in the United States. Palliative care is the means where health care providers strive to improve the quality of life of their patients, and alleviate their patients from suffering during the end of life stages. Since pain is self-subjective, PAS allows patients to determine when their quality of life has been diminished and intolerable, and living is no longer an option. Furthermore, Schencker mentions Brittany Maynard, a young woman who moved to Oregon after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and opted to end her life through PAS. Maynard met the criteria to receive a lethal prescription to end her life as she did in November in 2014. Before ending her life, she became an activist for death with dignity by working with advocacy groups, blogging and making videos explaining her reason for seeking death with dignity. In addition, Brittany Maynard’s advocacy work led 20 states to introduce legislations that challenge laws opposing PAS (Schencker, 2015). However, moral ambiguity is not the only obstacle in passing laws regarding PAS. Under

The ideas that the authors hold make complete sense to anyone who has dealt with issues on medical decisions. The authors believe that “we should not expect to make physicians complicit” (Roberts and Redd) on the practice of assisted-suicide as it is morally incorrect. Roberts and Redd attack the idea and even consider it “radical individualism”. They use strong language to try and persuade the reader to realize that putting pressure on a person to consider ending their lives prematurely, damages the person themselves and the community that surrounds them. This appeal to pathos can effectively persuade a reader to agree with their standpoint. By connecting decisions to the consequences that come with, the authors drastically change a person's feelings towards the idea/concept. In addition to appealing to the audience's emotions, Roberts and Redd touch on the how dignity connects to religion. “The primary dignifying relationship for the human is his or her relationship with God, a relationship that is empowered by the fact that the human is created in the image of God” (Roberts and Redd). This statement is powerful and can be interpreted many ways. One that comes to mind is that even though we should have the choice to make when it comes to how we live, we -depending on our religious ties- are created by God and should not be ‘allowed’ to make the decision

The recent case of 29-year-old American woman Brittany Maynard who is suffering from stage 4-brain cancer has made news after she publicised her choice to purse death with dignity. Her case has been so widespread due to her young age and confidence in her decision to end her life. Maynard is working in her last few months to publicise every humans right to chose when they die, and to avoid suffering. “I believe this is a healthcare right and choice that should be available to all terminally ill Americans,” she stated. Maynard moved to Oregon, one of only 5 states in America to have ‘Death with Dignity’ laws, in order to fulfil her

Imagine being a terminal patient in agonizing pain only to be told there is no cure for the pain, and being terminal you will eventually die but it won’t right away, but the pain is so great you wish for death every day. Many advocates on the opposing side of the law believe that the Death with Dignity law should be considered suicide. The Death with Dignity law allows terminally ill patients to hasten their inevitable death. Death with Dignity is not suicide but a possible option if the patients’ pain becomes too great and their quality of life is severely diminished. Protesters on both sides of this debate believe that they are doing what’s

Having to endure an illness is unbearably painful. It is torture what these patients have to endure, so the least they should be given is the choice to end the pain with physician-assisted suicide. According to Victoria Cavaliere, Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old married woman, was suffering from a glioblastoma brain tumor; she decided to end her life using physician-assisted suicide. Maynard was young; before cancer appeared, she had a full life ahead of her with her husband, but the pain cancer would cause her was going to be too much to endure. It is clear that she didn’t choose to die because of depression or any other reasons many like to bring up. Maynard was willing to give up her life in order to avoid reaching the stage where the pain would be too much. Because of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, Maynard was able to choose the last day of her life and was able to say goodbye to her loved ones in

In addition to the process of grieving and accepting significant loss, individuals are often faced with moral and ethical issues related to the process of death. These issues include the prospect of their loved one experiencing a “bad death”, which has been discussed as involving distress, a lack of acceptance, and death not being in agreement with their wishes (Somerville, 2001; Tan & Manca, 2013) or difficult end of life decisions, like end of life care or euthanasia (Lovell, Smith, & Kannis-Dymand, 2015; Somerville, 2001). In the case of the latter, there is often a moral debate between continuing someone’s life in spite of his or her medical state (pro-life) and choosing a medical

The story of Brittany Maynard is a very tragic one. Brittany was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer at the tender age of 29. No treatment could save her life and the treatments that were available would have greatly affected her physically, emotionally, and mentally. This diagnoses stripped her of starting a future with her newly-married husband and simply experiencing life to the best of her ability. Knowing this, and knowing that her cancer would only get more aggressive with time—taking her sense of self, bit by bit everyday—what was she to do? Through research, she discovered death by dignity, which is an “end of life option for mentally competent, terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live” (Maynard). After relocating to Oregon (one of the few states that death by dignity is authorized) she received medication to take, in the event that she wanted to die on her own terms. Brittany Maynard died just over a month to the date that her article was published by CNN.

29 years old Brittany Maynard, she’s been married for just over a year and has terminal brain cancer. In April 2014, she had six months or less left to live. She made a decision to move from California to Oregon to access that state’s Death with Dignity Act. The law authorized her to a take life-ending medication, so she can pass away gently and peacefully at home with family. Also she said she is not suicidal, she doesn’t want to die. But there’s no treatments that save her life. And she wants to die on her own terms. She posted her video on “Youtube” that she’s planning to end her life on November 1, 2014. She had life ending medication that prescribed by her doctor on November 1 surrounded by her family. Her story has gone viral. Millions have been inspired by her strength and bravery. Also there are many arguments for death with dignity and against it. There are many concerning about moral and ethical issue. Is it “Right to die” or “Right to live”? What about Medical World’s opinion? Keep the Hippocratic Oath or Respect Patient’s Dignity? Religious aspect is also important, is your belief can get over the life-end suffering?

Brittany Maynard was a 29 year old woman who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and given six months left to live. The doctors gave her the option of full brain radiation, but that would make her hair fall out and cause burns on her scalp. Her next option was to take medicine to help her relax in a hospice setting, but her pain could become resistant to the drugs. Her quality of life would go downhill fast, and she didn’t want to die in pain. She was supportive of physician assisted suicide and the “death with dignity” act.

Assisted suicide is viewed as a way to maintain human dignity, which is why there is a campaign to try and legalize physician-assisted suicide. It’s prideful for a terminally ill patient to “die with dignity”, however, most policy makers in our society have rejected the campaign. It’s a social debate regarding high cost of treatment in terminal phases as well as an ethical debate, because the struggle for life is a universal and natural thought for people within our societies. However, as a rule, the family doctor who has known the patient for years is the best judge of condition along with

She had just been married and trying for a family; however, after this, she knew her quality of life would be gone. She in fact had considered passing away at a Hospice care center; nonetheless, after realizing that the cancer would slowly eat her mind and not affect her healthy body, she knew suffering in Hospice would not be an option for her. She started researching euthanasia and came across Death with Dignity, an “end-of-life option for mentally competent, terminally ill patients with 6 months or less to live”. In this situation, a physician gives a patient a self ingesting medication which the patient can take themselves if “the dying process becomes unbearable.” From this article, I learned that patients like Brittany Maynard have validity in their arguments of dying on their own terms. Brittany states that she is not suicidal and does not want to die; however, she is going to without her control and does not want to put herself or family through the pain. Brittany also adds how hard and time consuming it was to allow this process to happen, even after moving to Oregon which is only one of the few states which allows this end-of-life option. Overall, Brittany hopes this option

For example, Brittany Maynard was a terminally ill patient who found peace with euthanasia. She was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 29 and there was no effective treatment to save her life. Without euthanasia, Maynard would have to wait to die in hospice care. She told CNN, “I could develop potentially morphine- resistant pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss of virtually any kind. Because the rest of my body is young and healthy, I am likely to physically hang on for a long time even though cancer is eating my mind. I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would have had to watch that” (Maynard). For many terminally ill patients, their quality of life is very low, and they begin to lose their ability to move or communicate. Even with painkillers, there is still suffering. After months of slow deterioration of the mind, the patient would be nothing but a body. Euthanasia provides the opportunity to die as a full human being and to skip weeks or months of suffering. Maynard found peace in not only the option to die with dignity, but the choice. She wrote, “Who has the right to tell me that I don't deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the right to make that choice for me?...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). Although the illness is a death sentence, euthanasia is a way to decide when, how, and where the patient dies, giving the patients some much sought-after

One of the few certainties of life is death, but in the twentieth century it is still a taboo subject. The "forbidden" nature of death adds to the unnamed fears and worries that most people feel when asked to confront the idea of their own death. Yet once people can overcome their reluctance to discuss the subject, most often what is revealed is not the fear of death itself, but the manner of dying. The difficulty of thinking about "death with dignity" is that it implies that one day you, or someone you love, may be in a position to want that choice. Even if someone wanted to choose euthanasia as a way to end their existence, their wish may not be carried out, unless they live in the state of