Legalization of Assisted Suicide
Authors Len Doyal and Lesley Doyal have written the article ¨Why Active Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide Should be Legalized¨ in the British Medical Journal, and they discuss legalizing assisted suicide. The author mentions Diane Pretty as an example of a terminally ill patient that wants to decide now to end her life. She was was not given the consent to do so. Many people are going down the same road as Mrs. Pretty. Ones who know that the value of their life will soon be nonexistent and filled with pain and suffering. When it is acceptable to have a doctor pull a treatment keeping up a life, a person should be able to pull their own. In this case, a person can still be looking at passive euthanasia,
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In the words of Kristy Martin, it can turn into “mental suffering” (Stockenstrom 12). When disease takes away all a person has to enjoy because they may not be able to see, walk, or even talk, they become a slave to their body and they cannot break free (12). Many wonder that if legalized, it will be abused and suicides will occur, but this happens every day. A doctor will cut off your support line when your life seems irredeemable, and the correct people may not have been asked. Doctors make mistakes and can even choose how to treat the patient when they walk in. Accidental involuntary euthanasia, where the patient can give consent but does not, could always happen also. The fact that involuntary euthanasia can happen or an instance where they deny food or medication but assisted suicide can not. Why can they not choose the die when they see fit the assisted suicide way and not having a distressing death (Doyal and Doyal …show more content…
We set up palliative care laws and try to make sure a patient is taken care of the way they wished to be for this reason. For some, it may be that they do not want to be on a ventilator or they do not want to live in a state of confusion, and to some, the thought of being completely dependant is a scary situation because they will lose dignity A person would never have to worry about it with an assisted suicide program. Their dignity could stand strong and they could die with it. If a nurse is required to make the patients lives the best they can to keep their dignity, they should take the next step to let them choose when they die so that they can skip the part of how they die. As humans, the Aristotelian idea says we have the ability to act upon what the think is right, and dignity is a choice we are fond of. For medical staff to make sure a patient does not leave this world with indignities done, we should be able to do what needs to be done for the person to make them comfortable, even that means their decision is to die via assisted suicide. If we know a the patient is suffering from pain or has become depressed for a reason that their dignity has been wronged (Allmark 255).
In summarization, assisted suicide should be a pro choice. Many people do not want to