The Rights Of A Human Right

Individual Rights are rights that a person has that include the freedom to think, act, work, and behave. Freedom of speech, the right to live, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and many more similar rights are rights that we have as individuals. It all started on December 10, 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. Individual Rights provide us with freedom that cannot be interfered by no one including the government. The moral principle of the Individual Rights is “right” which symbolizing the freedom we each have. We hold the freedom of action meaning us as individuals get to do what we desire. Right shows a positive which is what we hold when we have the obligation of doing something.

A tough issue on the rise in the United States is whether or not Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) should be legal. Physician Assisted Suicide allows a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to a patient to end their life. However, the patient has to take the drugs on their own. PAS would be only offered to those suffering from a terminal illness with less than six months to live. The way these patients go about treating and or living with a terminal illness is a very hard decision to make. This is the first time they have been given the choice of how they wish to die. PAS is an option that allows the sick to avoid the immense pain in their final months. The issue however, is whether this allows them to die with dignity or if it allows them to be taken advantage of.

Medical ethics and patient care go hand and hand. As health care providers, it is their duty to see that the patient 's needs are met. We are charged to insure comfort and proper recovery. The question here is whether there is a difference for patients who request voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. These patients have the same rights to quality care of their bodies as we all do. Although, the United States constitution ensures us the right to life, it doesn 't mean that the right to die is taken away. Five states currently allow physician assisted suicide. In each state there has been controversial and contentious debate as to whether states should follow the lead of states that have allowed PAS.

Physician-assisted suicide needs to be recognized by the federal government to show terminally ill patients that their right to autonomy is not being ignored. The Bill of Rights of Patients was constructed to outline just this. According to the American Cancer Society, “the American Hospital Association drafted a Patients’ Bill of Rights to inform patients of what they could reasonably expect while in the hospital.” One of the notes stated in the Bill of Rights of Patients is the right to autonomy. The right to autonomy specifically states that “patients have the right and ability to make their own choices and decisions about [the] medical care and treatment that they receive” (US Legal). If this right to autonomy is ignored what rights do terminally ill patients have? The answer is little to none. Physician-assisted suicide and the right to autonomy go hand in hand. The more knowledge that people have, the greater their ability to make educated and insightful decisions about the medical choices that are accessible to them and their families. Physician- assisted suicide should be like any other treatment someone can ask for, and the right to autonomy protects this doctor-patient agreement.

Humans are given the right to life which states that “nobody should be arbitrarily deprived of their life.” Imagine being given your lifespan at birth, and a person that does not personally know you or your family told you how to spend those years. This is essentially what the government is doing by withholding and criminalizing patients of the resources with which to end their lives. If people have the right to life, that right should also include the right to control their quality of life; the right to life should not entail the life that has been chosen for the individual, but rather the life that the individual choses. Over 91 percent of patients said that losing autonomy was the reason that they chose physician assisted suicide, and 71 percent said that they wanted to die with dignity. The desire to increase autonomy among terminally ill individuals is one that is shared by Dr. Timothy Quill M.D., a palliative care specialist from the University of Rochester Medical Center: “Patients with serious illness wish to have control over their own bodies, their own lives, and concern about future physical and psychosocial distress. Some view potential access to physician-assisted death as the best option to address these concerns.” If we aim to promote freedom and autonomy of oneself, why then, should we deny people the right to choose when, and on what terms, they die? Supreme Court Justice William Brennan states that: "An ignoble end steeped in decay is abhorrent. A quiet, proud death, bodily integrity intact, is a matter of extreme

Should individuals hold the privilege to survive or expire, conferring to their personal perception of a “good life” even if they are not hurting anyone else? The exceedingly divided dispute around the procedure of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) asks this very question. Although physician-assisted suicide is relatively new to the realm of ethical issues it is often the main topic in many discussions about proper healthcare and palliative care. Physician-assisted suicide was first explicitly legalized in the United States when Oregon passed its Death with Dignity Act in 1994 (Kotva, 2016). The Act stipulates that “a doctor provides a patient with a lethal dose of medication or another way of causing death, but the patient, not the doctor,

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?

Or is it the duty of the state to decide an exceptional circumstance, for instance when individuals in a vegetative state, under which life can be ended? Could it be that the right already exists with all individuals, not to be conferred upon by the state on rare occasions but something every individual is born with? The right to life by extension also means the right to stop living, making the right to die an es-sential fundamental right? ’ For many years people everywhere have struggled with the idea of Doctor Assisted Suicide. The economist asked IPSOS MORI to survey people in 25 countries on whether doctors should be allowed to help patients to die, and if so, how and when. Russia and Poland are against, but we find strong support across America and Western Europe for allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients with terminal diseases. In 11 out of the 15 countries we surveyed. Most people favored extending doctor assisted dying to patients who are in a great deal of physical suffering but not close to death. How, then, should assisted dying work? For many the model is Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. It allows (but does not obliged

Physician assisted suicide or euthanasia should be a right granted to all citizens who are suffering from a degenerative, painful, or fatal condition that would cause them to be unable to enjoy their lives as healthy people do. The right to die with dignity is a fundamental issue that is debated in the spiritual side of everyone. Some of us may have known someone close to them who has seen or gone through an ordeal as watching someone take their last breath. No one should suffer in pain or have their dignity taken from them, when they should be celebrating the life they have left in them. Personally, after experiencing my mother and sister take their last breath, it was heart wrenching. Their lives were filled with pain medication, breathing difficulties, and last visits from old friends and relatives. Only the patient can ask, “How do I die?” They valiantly will themselves to stay, because of the love of family and friends. The end is inevitable. We all know this. When given the diagnosis of an incurable disease or debilitating news of no cure, we should have the right to die with dignity. The fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States states, "No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This clause, known as the "Due Process Clause," has been used by the Supreme Court to protect the right of individuals to make decisions about "...the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a

Physician-assisted suicide is the practice in which a doctor prescribes a terminally ill patient with a lethal medication as a form of active, voluntary euthanasia. These patients, rather than suffer slowly and painfully, often request this procedure as a means of experiencing a more “dignified” death. The debate surrounding this issue is a heated one, especially among the general public whose attitudes are deeply influenced by the level of patient pain and discomfort (Frileux et al. 334). At the heart of the issue is the conflict between a patient’s right to choose between life and death and, as expressed by one social scientist, “society’s obligation to protect its most vulnerable members from hastened and not completely voluntary death”

Terminally ill patients are able to make the decision to take their lives because they believe it is the best decision for them to make. However most patients do not have the mental strength to support the decisions they are making. It is true that terminally ill patients understand what is best for them. especially considering they are in pain and want relief. However because they have a disability should not be allowed to make these decisions. Dr. Leon Kass who was a medical doctor explains, “…physician-assisted suicide ‘is, in fact, the state’s abdication of its duty to protect innocent life and its abandonment especially of the old, the weak, and the poor’” (Anderson). This shows how it is our duty to protect the absent minds of those who

The decision to live or die should be determined by the patients’ themselves rather than societal norms. As stated in the Constitution, citizens of the United States reserve the right to privacy in the fourth amendment. Citizens withhold the decision to determine if physician-assisted suicide is necessary. Even though there are many ethical implications regarding euthanasia, it should be legal across the nation to respect the patient’s will.

Human rights are universal rights that we are entitled to. It is a freedom that is guaranteed based on the principle of respect for an individual. As mentioned in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights are a “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all member of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world” (Kent, page 80). When asked what our rights are, we tend to get different answers and meanings. Some people recite the rights that they know; but let’s face it, not everyone knows all of the rights that they truly have. The rights we have consist of many things such as the right of having an adequate food supply. The right to

The paper will consist of detailing key ideas that are used to identify a human’s political rights. Political Rights started with the creation of the Magna Carta in England, whose policies were carried into the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights. There are specific U.S. Court cases that test a United States Citizen’s political rights, and they are identified in the Bill of Rights, such as the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment, each of with protects a person’s freedoms, prohibits search and seizure without a justified cause, and cruel and unusual punishment, respectively.

What are human rights? Human rights are the fundamental rights and freedoms that belong to all people. They belong to every single one of us and they are universal, inalienable, indivisible and interdependent. The evolution of human rights goes back to that of the Enlightenment. One of the first published and signed documentations of human rights around the world were the United States and French Declarations of Independence. Throughout history there have been many leaps in the pursuit of equal human rights across the world, but there have also been many setbacks. Although Canada is one of the most equal, accepting and free countries in the world, things have not always been that way. Canadian government has created many