Today, euthanasia is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Washington state, and Oregon. An exploration into the reasons for making it legal will help the reader understand why this very personal decision should be a choice, incurring no legal ramifications for anyone involved with the service. Public policy and the law must change to allow doctors, relatives, and loved ones to directly and intentionally help end another person’s life, should the patient deem it necessary. There are several reasons a person may want to end their life: extreme unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement, liberation from a low quality of life, and an exhaustion of the use of palliative care. It is up to the individual country or state to define these parameters, and in all of these countries, medically assisted suicide is illegal and prosecutable by law.
Proponents view expediting death as an action of merciful compassion in that it may be the only way to relieve intolerable suffering and to allow individuals to have control of their own lives (Pretzer, 2000). Although some argue it is unethical for doctors to actively assist in ending someone’s life, some also argue that not doing so in certain situations would actually be more unethical. I feel that doctors have the obligation to do no harm to patients, but to the best of their ability at all times. The supporters of physician- assisted interpret this to mean that physicians should do anything they can to keep patients out of prolonged pain and suffering (Battin, 1998). It is the duties and responsibility of a doctor to assist a dying patient in having a comfortable, easy death, which in some cases may call for physician-assisted suicide, assuming it is the patient’s wish.
Well, there are many debates about this practice. Some argue that it is ethical because it is argued on the grounds that physician assisted suicide is a rational choice for a person who is choosing to die to escape unbearable suffering. Even more, the physician’s duty to alleviate pain and suffering is justified by the act of providing assistance with suicide upon the patient’s request. Some have argued that this practice is unethical. They feel that physician assisted suicide conflicts with the duty of the physician to preserve life.
Thus, PAS is no longer an issue of self-determination. You put a great deal of power as well as stress and anxiety into the hands of the physician with regards to your own life. If you want to commit suicide don’t ask another individual to assist you, do it yourself. In addition to self-determination proponents of physician assisted suicide claim that physicians have a duty to ease human suffering. Assisting patients to end their lives is more humane than letting them suffer.
Living too long on the other hand, leaves a negative impact as well because there are terminally ill individuals out there who need the good, compassionate death so they would no longer suffer being alive and having the illness drag them down. Therefore, living in that condition seems far worse than death. Emanuel also states, “I am not advocating 75 as the official statistic of a complete, good life in order to save resources, ration health care, or address public policy issues arising from the increases in life expectancy.” (81). He wants individuals to reach out for the health care opportunities as much as they can so they won’t suffer. Evolution also enables us to live even longer.
Physician Assisted Suicide: Life or Death Karly Turner SOC 120 April 22, 2013 Physician Assisted Suicide: Life or Death A doctor’s obligation is to provide support and comfort through a terminally ill patient’s process of death. There has been a great deal of discussion over the topic of physician assisted suicide over the past couple of years. While this can be viewed as illegal in many people’s eyes, should terminally ill patient be allowed to determine if they want to live or die? Assisted suicide should be voluntarily made, but the patient must be capable of making that decision. If you are ill and feel nothing but pain should you be forced to live?
How would you feel if you had to spend each day lying in pain as you watch the clock tick your life away? I believe that PAD or (physician assisted dying) should be allowed for terminal patients in all states and not just Washington, Oregon, Vermont. Physician Assisted Dying should be made legal because it ends the suffering of the patient, it eases the burdens placed on their loved ones, and gives them the power to choose when and how they die. Death is not a joke. There are many cases where individual afflicted with terminal illnesses wish to die yet cannot because of many factors many such as the cannot do it there Selves, and they cannot be helped because to some it cannot be morally justified.
If this living will is so important for a person with cardiac issues then why isn’t the living will as important or adjusted for the person who wants to die in peace, they should be allowed to include in that living will their rights and choices to end their lives if they are terminal or considered brain dead, or if their quality of life is compromised. Not everyone would want to live as a paraplegic for the rest of their lives; this choice should be a choice for the person involved in the pain and agony. This process could show that virtue ethics is your personal choice if you can live with your decisions and make your end of life better for you and your family, then ethically wouldn’t you want to be the decision maker upon whether you want to lay in a bed for 10 years with bed sores and family trying to stop everyday because they feel an obligation to be there for you and the stress of trying to get there as often as they can and the terrible guilt when they can’t. But it is said when the patient doesn’t even know that the family and friends are
31).Conversely, no-one can be appropriately assigned the right to say life-saving means should be abandoned because someone else determines that a patient is an excessive burden or that it costs too much to treat a condition. Humans deserve the right to life, even if that life is not what others may judge as a good one. The government and doctors’ cannot decide who lives and dies by passing a law that relieves patients of their rights. Mankind’s right to die has been extensively discussed; however, passing laws in support of physician-assisted suicide takes that option from the patient and puts into the hands of those who may not have the patient’s best interest in mind. This topic is bigger than allowing a loved one to go softly from life, it involves too much room for the abuse of the nation’s elderly, mentally ill, and poor, which should not, and cannot be allowed to
Physician assisted suicide is another choice that would ensure your loved one is going to be pain free. If they chose to die by physician assisted suicide, they would be exercising their right to die with dignity. Physician assisted suicide is morally right because this decision can have some constructive consequences.