Essay on The Legalization of Assisted Suicide

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Sidney Parson
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20 November 2013 The Legalization of Assisted Suicide Assisted suicide is a topic that has caused much controversy as to whether it is a humane way to end a terminally ill person’s life or if it is a violation of the basic laws of medicine and devalues a person’s life. I personally believe that assisted suicide should be legalized in all states because every person has the right to decide what is best for his or her own life whether that decision is to live or to die. Assisted suicide is when a physician does not take a person’s life for them but instead provides the patient with the necessary means and information to perform the act and take his own life. Assisted suicide first became a noticed issue around 1990 when retired pathologist Dr. Kevorkian assisted his first patient to death with the “Suicide Machine.” This was a machine that Kevorkian invented that required an I.V and three glass bottles: one bottle contained a sedative, one bottle contained potassium chloride, and one bottle contained a saline solution. The machine was set by the person’s bed with the bottles connected to the I.V and when the patient decided they were ready to die, he pushed a button on the machine that first put them to sleep with the sedative and then killed him with the potassium chloride and saline solution. (Barrett) Assisted suicide is a humane and merciful way to end a person’s pain and suffering completely by said person’s choice. While many people state that assisted suicide devalues a person’s life and violates the laws of medicine, forcing a person to lay in excruciating pain and being able to offer them no relief other than pumping them full of various medications that will eventually start to shut down their internal organs just to try and contain their agony until they die naturally is inhumane. Devaluing a person’s life can in a lot of ways, and maybe in some people’s eyes a person having to die simply not to hurt does devalue a person, but in my opinion having to lay in pain all day and night watching your loved ones try to take care of you and cry over you devalues a person much more than allowing him to take his own life with a physician’s assistance would. A worry that people have with legalizing assisted suicide is that it could be used as a cover up for patient abuse. There is patient abuse in hospitals all over the country already that goes unreported, unnoticed, and ignored and legalizing assisted suicide may cause more patient abuse throughout some hospitals. Looking at it from an outsiders perspective though, I can see that legalizing assisted
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