Legalization Of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Imagine your terminally ill grandmother lying in a hospital bed, slowly dying of cancer, and the only two words she continues to repeat are “kill me.” If physician-assisted suicide, or PAS, was legal in the United States, loved ones would no longer have to suffer. In order to allow terminally ill patients to die with dignity, the U.S. government needs to legalize PAS. PAS should be legalized because it grants patients the right to a respectable death, the process ensures patients are competent enough to request it, and US physicians and AMA board members approve of it. Every human being has the right to an honorable passing. This means that when it is time for a patient to die, he or she can leave this Earth on their own measures. Anthony …show more content…
3). As time goes on, symptoms of a patient’s diagnosis get worse and patients often lose their sense of self. Before loss of identity occurs, patients should have the option of PAS so they are able to die with dignity knowing that their illnesses did not take everything from them.
It can be hard for a patient’s family to let their loved ones go, but a family member’s opinion, based on morals or religion, does not outweigh that of the one lying in the hospital bed. The ultimate decision on terminative care should always be up to the respected patient, unless his or her mental stability has been declared unfit to make medical decisions. Patients go through extensive testing to see if they qualify for PAS. First of all, the patient has to have a prognosis, validated by a second doctor, of six months or less to live, and have the …show more content…
Jerome E. Bickenbach, leader of the Disability Policy Unit and Professor in the Department of Health Sciences and Health Policy at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland, is against the legalization of PAS. Bickenbach has a hypothesis that disabled patients may be pushed to undergo PAS “because others have chosen for them a lesser quality of life” (Janet, Cohn & Lynn, par. 25). Bickenbach calls this phenomenon the inequality of autonomy, which is “the prevailing prejudicial social attitude that having a disability is a sensible reason for committing suicide" (Janet, Cohn & Lynn, par. 26). Disabilities do not justify suicide by any means. A patient who has mental restrictions receives the same information on PAS from his or her medical provider as any other patient. People should not worry about physicians misleading patients into PAS ach patient requesting PAS has to follow the same protocol to receive the lethal and are treated in the same