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Argumentative Essay: The New Legalization Of Assisted Suicide

1499 Words6 Pages

Assisted suicide is when a person kills themselves by drugs with the help of a trained doctor. This is an important issue for the legislature to address because when there was the prohibition of physician assisted suicide, many people tremendously suffered and many have taken their own life because of this, leaving families shocked and devastated. It is important for people to have the option to make a choice of their own to die under certain circumstances if it has become intolerable to live because of a medical condition. This has become possible with the new legalization of assisted suicide. Another big issue is that there needs to be a balance between protecting the right to autonomy and dignity and protecting vulnerable disabled persons …show more content…

In the Carter case, it was stated that the prohibition on assisted suicide must remain in the Criminal Code in order to protect vulnerable people being induced to commit suicide. It can be very hard to identify who is vulnerable and who is not. Autonomy is important in decision making. Vulnerable people may have their autonomy interfered by external sources causing the choice of assisted suicide to not actually be their real choice. This causes issues in the process of assisted suicide. These sources can include, depression, lack of needed disability-related support, financial issues and abuse to elder and those with disabilities. The dignity of persons is harmed because of disabilities which could result in them thinking they are not worthy of living, increasing vulnerability. Because of this, it is important that safeguards are put in place to ensure that a person’s dignity has not been harmed to the point that they feel that there is no other option besides assisted suicide. It must be certain that every case there is real autonomy by the individual and make sure that dignity has not been harmed because of devaluation, social exclusion, abuse and lack of support because this is when they feel that they lost autonomy over their own

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The right to assisted suicide is a heavily controversial and debated over topic that concerns people all around the United States. The arguments go back and forth about whether a dying patient has the right to end their life with the assistance of a doctor or physician. Some people are against it because of moral and religious reasons. Others are for it because of their compassions and respect for unhappy patients waiting to die naturally. Assisted suicide is prohibited by common law or criminal statute in all 50 U.S. states; medical aid in dying is specifically authorized in 5 states: Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, and California.

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In the Newsweek article, “Physician-Assisted Suicide Is Always Wrong,” by Ryan Anderson, it is stated that the legalization of assisted suicide “would be a grave mistake.” Anderson provides a few examples of why assisted suicide is detrimental. One, he states it leads to an endangerment of the weak and disenfranchised in societies. His outlook is that the purported safeguards of eliminating risk has mainly been nonexistent, which in some countries like the Netherlands who has legalized physician assisted suicide (PSA), has lead to doctors administering lethal injections to patients without request. Two, Anderson, sees assisted suicide as a compromise in the practice of medicine.

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Physician-assisted suicide is a widely controversial issue that is discussed in today society. There are debates over whether it is ethically correct or whether assisted suicide should be legalized for the terminally ill. Each side of the arguments have different viewpoints concerning individual aspects of physician-assisted suicide. Such as certain guidelines that should exist if legalized. Advocates of physician-assisted suicide argue that it should be legal under circumstances such as great suffering through terminals illness.

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