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Assisted Suicide Persuasive Speech

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In 1997, the state of Oregon began to allow doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients to peacefully end their lives. Eighteen years later, on October 5th, 2015, governor Jerry Brown of California signed a measure allowing assisted suicide. Besides Oregon & California, Washington, Vermont, and Montana are onboard as well. However, five consensual states isn’t enough. Patients across the country should have the freedom to choose not to go through a draw-out, unpeaceful, and painful death, nor should be forced to put their families through it. The sick shouldn't have to watch their family go into financial debt due to expensive treatments that do not give permanent results. All US states should allow physicians to administer fatal drugs to sane patients that are suffering from definite terminal diseases in an effort to tranquilly die.
Freedom is a nationwide right. Dying patients still carry this freedom, so they should be able to have the option of assisted suicide, as pitiful as it may sound. Governor Jerry Brown reflected on his decision to sign the bill; “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death, I do not know what I would do if I …show more content…

Block, 2000). Susan suggests that, besides the patient, medical procedures put an enormous amount of emotional pain and suffering on their families. If you contemplate it, you can imagine how terrible it must be to already be in emotional and/or physical pain, but to watch your family cope with the grief. Assembly woman Susan Eggman, a former hospice worker who wrote the assisted suicide act in California revealed, “...it’s not an occasion of feeling joy over a bill that is signed; I know the peace this will bring some families today and in the future.”

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Public opinion polls showed increased support for physician assisted suicide. This was due in part to technological advances in medicine as well as a greater recognition of patient’s rights.” Twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard, utilized Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, took her own life in November 2014 following a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. “A Pew poll conducted after Ms. Maynard’s death, revealed that people viewed this as a heroic act. Also, revealed, the majority of Americans, most likely including physicians, now favor legalizing physician-assisted suicide for painful and incurable conditions: 68 percent in favor, 28 percent opposed.

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384 Words | 2 Pages

First, patients have the right to choose what kind of treatment they get, and whether to get treatment or not. Because they have the right to die with dignity and in a humane way. They will get prolonged pain if they don’t die. Second, physician assisted suicide can take away burden of patient and their family. Because some patients feel emotionally, physically and financially drain members of the family because of their being sick.

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500 Words | 2 Pages

Physician-assisted suicide should be legal because it is a compassionate response to relieve the suffering of a dying patient. California should pass the Death With Dignity Act, despite the negative connotations associated with physician-assited deaths. Instead of prolonging the suffering experienced by these patients, the patients should have the opportunity to end their lives on their own terms, peacefully and quietly. Jack Kervorkian coined the term “Death Doctor. He was a physician who abused his power and “assisted with more than 130 suicides.

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693 Words | 3 Pages

Monday October 5th the governor of California, Jerry Brown, signed the “Right to Die” bill. This bill would allow doctors in California to prescribe lethal amounts of medications to end a terminally ill patient’s life. Brown signed this controversial bill after explaining that he did this based on his personal decision “of want he would want if ever faced with his own death.” Governor Brown wrote in his letter to addressing state law makers that he “is certain that he would find comfort in being able to consider the options afford by this bill”(Botelho). But the Californians Against Assisted Suicide (CAAS) called this bill flawed saying that lawmakers should first consider how this bill could affect the disadvantaged people of America.

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2010 Words | 9 Pages

Ever since then, there has been countless attempts to legalize PAS, and countless times that they have been denied. However, some states’ efforts have succeeded. For example, five states currently allowed assisted suicide, including Oregon, California, Vermont, Washington, and

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641 Words | 3 Pages

Physician assisted suicide was first introduced to our society in 1997, when the citizens of Oregan voted to legalize this highly controversial practice (Friedman, 2007). At the time, they passed the “Death with Dignity Act, which allowed a terminally ill person meeting certain criteria to end his or her own life with the help of a doctor” (Friedman, 2007). When a patient meets all the requirements needed to undergo physician assisted suicide, he or she will voluntarily take a lethal dosage of medication at their own discretion. According to the 2006 Eight Annual Report on the Death with Dignity Act, only 17 percent of dying patients in Oregan consider physician assisted suicide, but only 2 percent go through with the procedure. Even though

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764 Words | 4 Pages

The pain and suffering associated with terminal illnesses takes a toll on patients. Individuals do not want to be a burden to their families and want to end their lives due to the pain they are going through. Knowing that their lives will soon come to an end, the patients request proper instructions from their doctors to end their lives. Oregon, one of the first states to legalize assisted suicide has had 340 cases of PAS. There has not been a surge of people moving into Oregon to end their lives and not many states have followed in Oregon’s footsteps.

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631 Words | 3 Pages

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross author of On Death and Dying quotes,“Lots of dying patients say they grow in bounds and leaps and finish all there unfinished business, assisted suicide is cheating them of these lessons, like taking a student out of school before a final exam. It’s not love, it’s protecting unfinished business.” Physicians are given too much power being able to prescribe this drug, and it crosses an extreme amount of ethical lines. Assisted suicide should be demolished because doctors are supposed to save others, it decreases the value of human life, and the drug could be abused.

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734 Words | 3 Pages

Doctor-assisted suicide is a controversial topic but what people fail to realize is the real facts of it. Physician-assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia, is quite self-explanatory; it is when a terminally ill person has the physician's help to die. It is not legal in all fifty states, and it should be. It is a hard decision to make and can prevent not the suffering of the sick lives, but the family's life, too. Doctor-assisted suicide should be legal, so terminally ill people can end their suffering, to help end their family’s suffering, and a doctor's job is to take care of their patients.

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1908 Words | 8 Pages

Historically, assisted suicide was not legal anywhere in the United States, but recently more states are making it legal. According to the different states, assisted suicide is currently legal in Oregon, Washington, and montana. Hawaii, Pennsylvania, and Vermont are also considering allowing the law for physician assisted suicide to become legal in their state (Gordon). Before assisted suicide was a made a law, it was completely illegal for a physician to prescribe a lethal pill to a patient, but as of now, Oregon, Washington, and Montana are the places in the United States that do allow physician assisted suicide.

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1215 Words | 5 Pages

However, the sad truth is that nobody gets to choose how he or she dies. Or do they? In some states such as Oregon, Montana, and Washington physician-assisted suicide has been made legal, allowing people to choose death. This sounds very dark and wrong but the truth is that physician assisted suicide should be legal throughout the United States because people deserve the right to make choices for themselves in life, because some people would die an extremely painful death, and because some people have major disabilities that prevent them from really living.

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1268 Words | 6 Pages

Moreover, there should be the freedom of choice to have the right to choose when you can get doctor assisted suicide for patients such diseases. Secondly, many have asked for assisted suicide in the past as well but not have been granted it. In the early 1990’s a woman named Sue Rodriguez had a disease which she was suffering from but she was not able to get doctor assisted suicide. She had a disease called ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). This was a neurological disease that affected nerve cells, affecting movement of muscles.

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665 Words | 3 Pages

Many people will believe that this ethical issue should be legal all over the United States. Oregon, California, Colorado, Vermont, Washington, and D.C all have legalized the process of allowing a terminally ill patient painlessly end their lives with the approval of their doctor. Oregon runs a pro-assisted suicide group called “Death with Dignity”. According to their website, “The Death with Dignity process is robust: Two physicians must confirm the patient’s residency, diagnosis, prognosis, mental competence, and voluntariness of the request. Two waiting periods, the first between the oral requests, the second between receiving and filling the prescription, are required.”

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937 Words | 4 Pages

As with Oregon, Washington “residents must understand the treatment and the comforting care that is available for them.” (Introduction to The Right to Die: At Issue). Although the choice of assisted suicide has been available for some time, participation in the program hasn’t been staggering. In fact, doctors are writing more prescriptions for the lethal medication than there are people taking the medicine. In Washington there are “50,000 deaths a year and cancer is the second leading cause of death.

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858 Words | 4 Pages

“I don't want my family to see me suffering, I don't want that to be their last memory of me.” For many individuals the term suicide is referred as something horrible that only “desperate” people do. But what if this person is really in pain? What if this person has absolutely no chance or possibility of surviving without taking any prescribed medications? Assisted suicide should be available to terminally ill patients because it will end their suffering and it will prevent the waste of money in vain.

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