In 1789, the Constitution was finalized by the people of the United States. Inside, the Constitution states the rights between the individual states and and the central government, known as federalism. Unfortunately, because the terms were so broad, it caused major controversy over multiple subjects, one of them being assisted suicide.
If one is terminally ill, should they have the ability to go forward with a physician assisted suicide procedure? In 1999, Jack Kevorkian was arrested for physician assisted suicide. He was convicted of 2nd degree murder for assisting an alzheimer’s patient with euthanasia. This brought up a lot of controversy over whether or not doctors have a right to help a terminally ill person die. Oregon was the first to
…show more content…
The 10th amendment explicitly states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” (Annebergclassroom). Therefore, the states utilized this statement by justifying the argument that since there is no enumerated law in the constitution about specifically physician assisted suicide, then it should be up to the states to control the issue. Originally, the federal government used the 14th amendment - “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” (Law Cornell) - as a justification claiming that they should have power because they viewed assisted suicide as a right and a privilege; however, the states rebuttled by claiming that this was not applicable in the western culture, resulting the Supreme Court to allow states to override the federal government’s argument. A lot of their reasons for arguing over this cause is for the protection of public health. Since physician assisted suicide is has to do with public health, it resulted in both national and states to be concerned, resulting concurrent