Brooke Simunjak
Physician Assisted Suicide in the United States
A large dispute that has been going on for over a decade in the United States that is unknown by most is physician assisted suicide. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is when a physician supplies a patient with information and prescriptions to successfully end his or her life. An example of one of these prescriptions is secobarbital, which is a pill to treat insomnia, but with the right amount can be lethal. Debates have been going on for quite some time about whether PAS should be legalized in the United States for terminally ill patients. This debate has resulted in four states including Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Montana passing legislation and court ruling to become …show more content…
Is it really ethical to allow a person to kill themselves and give them the materials needed to do so? Murder is “the unlawful killing of another human being without justification or excuse,” (West’s) going off of that definition you cannot compare the two because PAS is at the consent or request of the individual. There is also a scare about what the effects on society would be, and whether the way we live would be affected in a negative way and cause confusion on what is morally right? No one can give an answer to that because no one can predict the future, but we can look at places where it has been legalized and draw a conclusion from …show more content…
If a person who is being caused excruciating amounts of pain from a sickness and is also already given an estimated time to live, they should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to live or die. In these cases, the government or law should not prohibit a person from escaping the unbearable pain by ending their own suffering. Going back to the example with Matthew and his brother, his story just goes to show that this right should not be taken away. Some people can argue that there were medical treatments to help Matthew, but this begs the question of whether or not today’s society pushes a person’s life expectancy too far under unfair conditions. We as humans should allow a person the right to die with dignity rather than leave them to wither away against their own
Physician Assisted Suicide in the United States
A large dispute that has been going on for over a decade in the United States that is unknown by most is physician assisted suicide. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is when a physician supplies a patient with information and prescriptions to successfully end his or her life. An example of one of these prescriptions is secobarbital, which is a pill to treat insomnia, but with the right amount can be lethal. Debates have been going on for quite some time about whether PAS should be legalized in the United States for terminally ill patients. This debate has resulted in four states including Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Montana passing legislation and court ruling to become …show more content…
Is it really ethical to allow a person to kill themselves and give them the materials needed to do so? Murder is “the unlawful killing of another human being without justification or excuse,” (West’s) going off of that definition you cannot compare the two because PAS is at the consent or request of the individual. There is also a scare about what the effects on society would be, and whether the way we live would be affected in a negative way and cause confusion on what is morally right? No one can give an answer to that because no one can predict the future, but we can look at places where it has been legalized and draw a conclusion from …show more content…
If a person who is being caused excruciating amounts of pain from a sickness and is also already given an estimated time to live, they should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to live or die. In these cases, the government or law should not prohibit a person from escaping the unbearable pain by ending their own suffering. Going back to the example with Matthew and his brother, his story just goes to show that this right should not be taken away. Some people can argue that there were medical treatments to help Matthew, but this begs the question of whether or not today’s society pushes a person’s life expectancy too far under unfair conditions. We as humans should allow a person the right to die with dignity rather than leave them to wither away against their own