Physician Assisted Suicide Legalization

In the original Hippocratic Oath, written in 400 B.C.E., physicians were made to swear that they would “neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will [they] make a suggestion to this effect.” While many physicians to this day fiercely agree with this statement, it would be unreasonable not to reconsider and evaluate a centuries-old perception on physician-assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) calls for physicians to prescribe lethal medication to patients with terminal illnesses who desire to end their lives. Although the debate over the legalization and morality of PAS is thousands of years old, in the past fifty years the issue has been put under the spotlight with the legalization of the practice in countries …show more content…
is based on the fact that the priority when treating terminally ill patients should be on the quality and not quantity of life. This means that patients must be allowed to have the right to make their own decisions. In a study conducted on assisted suicide in Oregon in 2015, the number one concern for patients requesting PAS is losing autonomy, with 96.2% of patients citing it as a reason for their request. In a country where freedom is of the utmost importance, it is imperative that no liberties be taken away unnecessarily. Many physicians and opponents argue that PAS allows physicians to give up on patients rather than provide them with proper end-of-life care. This, however, is just not the case. When Vermont issued a task force to provide a report on the Oregon experience they found that “in conclusion it is [quite] apparent from credible sources in and out of Oregon that the Death with Dignity Act has not had an adverse impact on end-of-life care and in all probability has enhanced the other options”. The system in Oregon also promotes and works with hospice care with 92% of patients who requested PAS being enrolled in hospice care. This shows how the legalization of PAS does not abandon current medical practices for the terminally ill, but actually works well with …show more content…
Glucksberg, Dr. Harold Glucksberg along with four other physicians and three terminally ill patients challenged Washington’s ban on PAS, asserting that the ban violates terminally ill patients’ Due Process rights as described in the Fourteenth Amendment. As in Vacco v. Quill, the Supreme Court decided 9-0 against the physicians. The basis of the court’s decision was that PAS is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause as the practice is “offensive to our national traditions and practices”. The court’s decision fails to take into consideration the fact that terminal sedation, heavily sedating patients and withholding food and water until they die, is legal and used widely in the practice of palliative treatment. The legalization of terminal sedation contradicts the court’s argument of intent, because when terminal sedation is used the doctor’s intent is to relieve pain by putting them into a deep unconscious state until they die. As David Orentlicher, an Associate Professor of the Center for Law and Health at the Indiana University School of Law, explains, “[t]erminal sedation is not only a type of euthanasia; it is also more problematic ethically than either assisted suicide or euthanasia”. This is because terminal sedation prolongs death and does not provide patients with the ability to control the timing and manner of one’s death. This strips them of autonomy, whereas PAS would allow them to quickly and painlessly end