Argumentative Essay: The Legalization Of Assisted Suicide

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Assisted suicide is a topic that has been enduring ongoing debate for many years. Whether to allows doctors to end a patient’s suffering, or to do all they can to prolong their lives. Although many oppose it, I believe that it should be legalized, and it is in states like Oregon and Vermont. One major controversy surrounding this is the sue of the Hippocratic oath by doctors. It is a historically taken oath that basically says that doctor will do no harm to their patients. This poses a very serious question as to what is harm? In an article on the New York Times’, a patient was asked why he wanted a doctor to just let him die. He replied, “Because there are worse states than death.”1 This should be of concern to us all. The pain a terminally ill patient is going through must be unbearable for them to decide death was better than living out whatever remaining time they had. Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in 6 states.2 However, even in these states there are still many steps that need to be followed before this can happen. According to an …show more content…
In active euthanasia, a doctor is directly involved, and is administering a drug or legal injection to end the patient’s life. With passive euthanasia the doctor just doesn’t give the patient the drugs. According to the Hippocratic Oath it is a doctor’s job to basically do no harm to the patient. Prolonging a life that is constantly suffering and in pain can be considered doing harm. This makes the argument about the topic a more ethical one. In an article by the LA times, it says that, “doctors do harm by forcing terminally ill patients to endure pain and suffering when they would like to end their lives.” This raises a serious question which asks, which causes more harm? Forcing the terminally ill to suffer and live or allowing them to die without pain? It is clear that allowing patients to live in pain is actually causing them
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