Euthanasia Essay: Physician Assisted Suicide

Euthanasia, also know as physician-assisted suicide, is a largely debatable topic due to its nature of giving a medically trained professional the ability to legally end a patient’s life by consent of the patient. To some people, this may seem unconstitutional, yet to others, it is a right that they feel entitled to in order to decide for their own fate. However, what if you’re faced with the issue of knowing that you will inevitably die and are given an estimate to how many more days you are allotted in this world? Does it become an issue then or is there a certain leeway going about it granted these people, the terminally ill, are bound to death? I believe on the side of being able to choose for oneself. I believe in the side in which you

As early as the 500 B.C., it is told that ancient Greece and Rome made common practice out of euthanasia. It was a time before Christianity where infanticide, active euthanasia, and suicide were tolerated. There was no definition of value to the subject of another human being’s life and therefore these decisions were made more upon a casual standpoint. Despite the “Hypocratic Oath, it was very common practice for physicians to end the lives of their dying patients with their consent,” (Orfali, R., 2011). Many still question as to why this was the mentality, however, it is still believed that, “throughout classical antiquity, there was a widespread support for voluntary death as opposed to prolonged agony, and physicians complied by often giving their patients the poisons they requested,” (“Historical Timeline”, 2016). Even as long ago as the fifth century were people deciding that life should be granted as it should be taken away, allowing for people the option to leave their lives on their own

Coming into a much more modern approach, euthanasia within many American Colonies was prohibited along with suicide. The value of life increases as law puts a halt on voluntary death. Yet, with the consensus on abolishing euthanasia, there were still reformers pushing to oppose the church’s beliefs against the subject and thought it was man’s right to do what he will with his own life. The closer time aged to the current century, the further away society is pushed from the idea that moral and value had nothing to do with life. The ideas of the church became more prominent and nearly annexes all utility of voluntary death and euthanasia except for consent through legal action within medicine. As early as 1828, the united states statutes outlawed assisted suicides in New York, but by the end of half a century later in 1870, medical professionals began publicly acknowledging the use of morphine and other drugs for said euthanasia. Throughout the upcoming years, the battle for the legalization of the medical practice was defeated on multiple accounts until the early 1980s where euthanasia became more publicly accepted within the walls of modern medicine. Claiming that life was a choice and that an individual had final say over said choice, many bills had been passed to allow the rights of an individual to