Physician Assisted Suicide Argumentative Essay

Physician-assisted suicide(PAS) attributes to the process in which a physician administers potentially lethal medications to his anguished patient possessing terminal illness, at their request, for the purpose of ending their own life. To be given this opportunity, the patient must be competent, terminally ill, and physically and mentally adequate to self-administer the aid-in-dying drug. They must be diagnosed and have six months or less to live. It is also commonly referred to as physician-assisted death(PAD), physician aid-in-dying, or physician administered hastened death. It is cruel and unnecessary to force a terminally ill patient to suffer through a prolonged, undignified death and have their last moments full of fear and pain. To

They do not want their family to remember them as weak and feeble. Instead, they would prefer to be remembered for how they lived their life and their impact on the people around them. These people get to a point where their pain and suffering has caused them to feel robbed of the quality they find essential to live. “I know it’s going to end; it’s never going to get better. So, I’m going to die, and what worries me is how I’m going to die”(Low 13). This man would have experienced even more unimaginable misery than he already had if he would have had to suffer through another six months of his life. He was able to leave his family with positive memories of their last moments together. There is a significant difference between being suicidal and wanting aid-in-dying. A suicidal patient wants to die, but they do not have a terminal illness. The ill patient wants to live, but their death is inevitable. “Suicide is an expression of despair and futility; aid-in-dying is an affirmation of a person’s dignity and rational self-determination”(Lee 44). Wishing for aid-in-dying is not wishing for your lifetime to be cut short. These patients merely wish to maintain their dignity as they are forced to accept the