Gyucnfjrbfbbfbrbrbrbdjrjrjnrbr fbfbcAnother reason for people to be in favor of physician-assisted suicide is some fear becoming a burden to their family and/or friends, and this makes people more susceptible to choosing assisted suicide, rather than letting a family member take care of them. Terminally ill patients feel guilty about having to have another person take care of them, instead of being able to take care of themselves and do things for themselves. "75% of those who asked for assistance in suicide cite fear of burdening spouses and families" (Arguments Against Physician-Assisted Suicide 2, hereafter Arguments). In the cases of Dr. Kevorkian, as mentioned earlier, most of the female patients were more worried about becoming a burden to friends and family, while the males were more likely to commit suicide due to the suffering(Keenan 16).
Another issue is for the family to keep the patient alive, even if they are in a state of vegetation, because they fear living with the guilt of killing a member of their own family (Johnson and Koop 41-42). The family members felt that if they did help in the assistance of the suicide, that they were abandoning the patient rather than helping with their final wishes, even in the cases of the patient only wanting the family to put them out of their misery (Thomas 17).
Most people that believe physician-assisted suicide should become a legal option for anyone who requests it, use the idea that everyone has the freedom of choice. In the book, Lawful Exit: The Limits of Freedom, Derek Humphry quotes Archibald MacLeish by saying, "Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for yourself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing" (8).
Another source states that, "Since there is no absolute legal, medical, or moral answer to the question of what constitutes a good or correct death in the face of a terminal illness, the power to make the decision about how someone dies can rest with only one individual--the person living in that
