Pros And Cons Of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Imagine that you get a phone call at seven one morning from the nursing home saying that your great grandmother, grandma, or mom, was going to be passing away within a few hours. You sit there with her and see how much pain she looks like she is in. Three hours pass, and nothing has changed except that her breathing starts to stop every now and then. The staff gives her morphine periodically to help ease the pain, but you can tell that she is still in pain. The thought crosses your mind that if they know that she is going to die that day, why can’t they just end her suffering early? Assisted suicide is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the suicide of a patient suffering from an incurable disease, affected by the taking of lethal drugs provided by a doctor for this purpose. Assisted …show more content…
This act states that mentally competent adults who have a terminal illness with a confirmed prognosis of having 6 or fewer months to live can voluntarily request and receive medication to hasten their inevitable death. Competence plays a huge part in any person’s argument for, and even against, Physician-Assisted Suicide for a couple of reasons. If the person who is terminally ill is competent and they know that the path ahead of them will be a painful path and they want to have Death with Dignity, they should be able to have that. No person should have to suffer and endure a long painful death in any circumstance and, as Death with Dignity’s website states, “The greatest human freedom is to live and die according to our own desires and beliefs.” Going back to the earlier example, imagine your grandma wants to go through with physician-assisted suicide…are you going to pressure her to not go through with it or will you let her do what is, in her mind, best for herself. Are you going to make her yield to you or are you going to let her be