Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician assisted suicide, also know as euthanasia, should be legalized. It is a procedure that a doctor does by injecting a suffering patient with a lethal drug. PAS is a choice a patient can make if they are in severe pain and have little to no chance of recovering. It is a very controversial topic and there are many reasons people have for why it should be legal, as well as illegal. Euthanasia is illegal everywhere in the United States except for Oregon. One reason why it should be legalized country wide is because suicide isn't illegal, so why should physician assisted suicide be illegal? Also, compassion should be shown when a person is suffering. Third, a person has the right to do what they want to do and make their own decisions.

If suicide is not illegal, why is euthanasia illegal? "No federal law prohibits suicide. Several of the states have laws which prohibit assisting a suicide .." (www.wikianswers.com). A person can attempt to kill themselves and fail. Their consequence would most likely be a trip to a mental institute. However, if a person does indeed succeed in committing suicide it is likely that it will be done in a messy and painful way. If a person truly does not want to live, a law prohibiting euthanasia will not stop them from taking their life. Physician assistant suicide is a much more humane way to die.

Compassion should take a large role in deciding whether physician assisted suicide should be legalized. "When medical science has done all it can and death has not yet brought merciful relief, family members suffer a sense of powerlessness and despair as they watch in horror someone they love dearly writhe in torment as they wait and hope for a quick end to their awful suffering" (James Rachels, The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality). It may be hard to think that some people would want to end their lives due to pain, but try to imagine this: You no longer have freedom as you once knew it. You don't have the ability to get up and drive your car anywhere you please. Instead, you are trapped in a bed every single day of your life. You have to take numerous pill a day to keep your body alive. Not a single day goes by when you are not in pain. It hurts you to see that your family is suffering also because they are watching you wither away. When taking all this into consideration, it isn't so hard to picture why a person living this way would want to die. A life where your days are nothing but pain and suffering is very unfair. "I'd say, if you are not terminally ill, you have no business forcing your opinions on those who are. You have not been there. You don't know what you are talking about" (David Humphry, 1997). I believe if a person has no desire left to live, it is cruel for a person to force them to stay alive. If a person is in their right state of mind then they should be able to make their own decision.

Living in America, we are fortunate to have a lot of freedom. We are given the right to say what we want, believe in whatever we chose to believe in, and make our own decisions. "Many patients have said that what they want most is a choice about how their lives will end, 'a finger on the remote control, as it were'" (www.medterms.com). If this is all true, how can the government stop you from deciding whether you want to live or die? "But, in the end, individuals should be given wide latitude in deciding when life has become an unendurable hardship" (James Rachels, The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality). Being a citizen of this country you have several rights, so why does the government feel the need to take some rights away? Our country's court system says that we "treat like cases alike." If this is true, then why is it legal for the terminally ill patients to refuse their medicines? Refusal of medications will surely be the death of patients who are dependent on them, but they have the right to not take them. So in the end, the patient dies without their medication but they will have gone through a lot of suffering that way. If euthanasia were legal, a lot of time, pain, and suffering would be saved. Euthanasia should be legal. A lot of people believe teenagers have the highest suicide rate. However, the elderly have an extremely high rate also. By legalizing physician assisted suicide a suffering person could choose to end their life in a much more humane way. Compassion should be shown to those who suffer, and people have the right to make their own decisions