Extended Argument: Physician Assisted Suicide

Extended Argument: Physician Assisted Suicide A popular topic of discussion for the last few decades is physician assisted suicide, assisted death, or death with dignity. This is the process of a terminally ill patient with less than six months to live asking their physician to provide them with a prescription so that they can control their death as well as the rest of their life. Patients in Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Montana, and California are now provided with the option to end needless suffering, say goodbye to their loved ones, and control the way that their illness affects their life. I am going to argue that physician assisted suicide is necessary because it improves quality of life, quality of death, and is a patient’s choice included …show more content…
While physician assisted suicide is a rather old issue, its popularity grew during the 1990’s when Dr. Kevorkian became a prominent figure in media (Humphry). Dr. Kevorkian was one of the leading supporters of assisted suicide and practiced it starting in late 1990, despite several criminal charges made against him. The media focused on Kevorkian, making both him and assisted suicide infamous for many years (Biography.com). While modern assisted suicide had an unconventional beginning, two years later Oregon’s Death with Dignity legislation was passed. Legislation is being drafted even today in states in which physician assisted suicide is illegal. Just recently, California signed the “end of life act” which allows patients to request this end of life care. Physician assisted death should be legal because it improves quality of life and death as well as is a patient’s choice included in bodily autonomy. While most patients that request the prescription intend to take it, a staggeringly large group of patients just need the peace of mind that accompanies the control it gives them. As shown in Table 1, a poll taken from 1998 to 2013, recipients of the prescription in Oregon did not always ingest the medication. A little over half actually used the death with dignity act to end their lives (Oregon Health …show more content…
More specifically, many of them believe that any form of suicide is a sin. An excerpt from a scholarly article about assisted death and its relation to Catholicism states “Intentionally causing one’s own death, or suicide, is therefore equally as wrong as murder… a refusal of love for self, the denial of a natural instinct to live, a flight from the duties of justice and charity…(Gummere)” Obviously, since they believe this they try to prevent people from ‘being damned.’ While the morality of physician assisted suicide can be reasonably called into question, religious freedoms are being infringed upon if eternal damnation is what’s preventing legislation from being passed. It’s important to respect religious freedoms but When arguing that death with dignity is morally conscionable, it can be said that “in current philosophical discussion on meaning of life ... several authors have argued that being moral and having a meaningful existence are connected to each other. (Varelius)” People that are prescribed medication to commit suicide have six months or fewer left to live. Often, they cannot take care of themselves or do the things that they enjoy. “In a study done by the Journal of Pallative Medicine in 2011, it was found that of the patients prescribed medication, 83% were in hospice care. (Smith)” For these reasons, patients’ quality of life is so poor and there is such little will