Physician Assisted Suicide Research Paper

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Physician-Assisted Suicide According to a poll taken in 2015, nearly 68% of people think leagalizing would be a practice(When a person has a disease…). Physician-assisted suicide can be defined as a case in which a doctor knowingly gives a patient the means to end their own life at their request. It is often confused with euthanasia, which is the execution of lethal means by a physician instead of the patient. Five states, including Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, and California, legally allow this process to occur. A large debate surrounds the issue of Physician-assisted suicide due to religious and moral beliefs. Physician-assisted suicide should be legalized in order to eliminate needless suffering by patient, provide patients access …show more content…
“Those who will die in a few days will son obtain relief without taking any action, and those who are on life-prolonging intensive care can often end their lives simply by refusing continued treatment. But others are condemned to continuing severe suffering by any legal system that confers no legal right to physician-assisted suicide” (Wellman 23). Patients should be able to legally use the assistance of their physician to eliminate their pain in any way. Studies in a palliative care unit show that pain is the main reason for considering Physician-assisted suicide. “Fear of future pain, and/or poor quality of life, were the most commonly cited arguments for holding a positive attitude towards euthanasia/PAS” (Johansen 456). If these people currently reside in a state that has no legal right to means of respectable death, they will be forced to live out the rest of their life in pain even if they decide they do not want …show more content…
Ronald Dworkin explains why its allowance is moral and legal. “...it defines a very general principle--that every competent person has the right to make momentous personal decisions which invoke fundamental religious or philosophical convictions about a life’s value for himself” (Wellman 22). In addition, terminal patients should not be forced to live if chances of regaining health are none or close to none. “If treatment, let alone cure, is no longer possible, then why should such people be forced to live on if they don’t want to” (“Your Right to Die…”). This is especially true when people no longer have the will to live and, consequently, develop a desire to die.

Furthermore, giving people legal access to physician-assisted suicide can offer them peace of mind to patients that they often lose because of serious illness. This is due to the fact that they fear what the future might hold and what it could offer them. “Peace of mind studies show that it is suffering that most dying people fear, not death” (Rollin 68). Therefore, giving those people control of the suffering they fear gives them peace of mind, even if they never use the lethal drugs
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