Legalization Of Physician Assisted Suicide

Not until the 1980’s, the only treatment option for a terminally ill patient was minimizing the pain during their final months. Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who is credited for inventing one of the first assisted suicide machines, is responsible for opening up the debate about physician assisted suicide. The debate has grown since Dr. Kevorkian was arrested in the 1990’s for the murders of some of his patients. Today, some may still argue that certain religions restrict the hastening of death for anyone. However, physician assisted suicide should be considered as another form of end-of –life care. Physicians need to be willing to provide their patients with the best treatment options, even if they include physician assisted suicide. Once palliative …show more content…
“Some doctors automatically object for religious reasons” (Humphry 174). Even though some religions do object, there is no reason to restrict everyone else’s access to this humane treatment option. The religious groups would not have to participate if physician assisted suicide became legal in all fifty states. “Lord Carey previously opposed assisted suicide but stated his reversal was not ‘anti-Christian’, reasoning that ‘in strictly observing the sanctity of life, the Church could now actually be promoting anguish and pain, the very opposite of a Christian message of hope’” (“Assisted Suicide Split”). Lord Carey went against the beliefs of the Church and changed his opinion about physician assisted suicide. Unlike the Church, he recognized that it was not acceptable to be promoting unnecessary pain and suffering. If the United States does not legalize physician assisted suicide, then the United States is acting very much like the Church in promoting the unwanted pain and suffering of terminally ill …show more content…
In order to qualify for physician assisted suicide you would have to go through rigorous testing to make sure that your diagnosis is correct and that you are mentally stable enough to go through with physician assisted suicide. “Physician-assisted death is a narrow question to be raised only when palliative care fails” (Quill 105). For some people, palliative care extends into hospice care, which, despite their best efforts, still leaves the patients in some form of pain either physically or mentally. Timothy Quill, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, agrees that palliative care must fail before physician assisted suicide. “In acute-care medicine, prolonging life is our foremost objective, and we ask people to endure considerable suffering in the interest of potential recovery and a return to a meaningful life” (Quill 106). For patients with an incurable and deadly disease or illness, asking them to stay in hospice care; therefore prolonging their pain and not allowing them to choose when they want to be done with the pain is something that must be stopped. Making physician assisted suicide legal, would allow for the patients whose palliative care options have run out, to have one final option of either escaping the pain by choosing physician assisted suicide or waiting for nature to run its course while in hospice care. For these reasons, physician assisted suicide must become