Physician Assisted Suicide Argumentative Essay

Physician Assisted suicide is the act of a doctor helping the patient die because the patient is suffering from an incurable disease and are terminally ill. Unless you are terminally ill this is something you might never understand. Until I started researching more about assisted suicide I never understood really what it was. If a patient is terminally ill I believe that they should have the right to decide whether to end their life or continue. If the patient decides ending their life will help them, it should be the job of the doctor to provide and help the patient die safely and free of as much pain as possible. With the help of a doctor, the terminally ill patient can die in peace and hopefully free of pain. Today, assisted suicide has

Two court cases, Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Gluksburg, brought about many controversies to the U.S. Supreme Court about Assisted Suicide. Directly from U.S Legal it says, “… The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that physician-assisted suicide is not a protected liberty interest under the Constitution. However… left the door open for states to permit physician-assisted suicide” (U.S Legal 2004). Although the U.S. Supreme Court believes assisted suicide to be a felony by the national government there isn’t a total ban in every state. The Supreme Court left this decision to be decided among each state individually whether to ban physician-assisted suicide or not. In both of these cases the Supreme Court gave sympathy to the terminally ill patients and claimed that the patient does have the right to refuse medical treatment. With the improving technology and medicine many states have started to take another look behind their stances on assisted suicide. So, because of the rising and improvements in medicine and technology, many states have started to investigate to see if physician-assisted suicide is appropriate under certain circumstances. All doctors have access to so many different kinds of

Assisted suicide can be explained through using the Utilitarianism Theory that supports physician-assisted suicide. Utilitarianism is by definition the actions that are right if they are useful, benefit the majority of people or promote someone’s happiness (Youngman 2013). Assisted suicide is the want of a patient to be relieved of suffering, thus comparing that to their happiness. The Utilitarianism theory holds true for assisted suicide. The patient wants to feel relief from their suffering thus making them happy. On the other hand, Catholic morals and values can reject assisted suicide. Many Catholics believe that God created you thus only God can take you away from your life. This would hold true even if a patient is suffering and wants to die. Catholics believe that no physician could help kill a patient; only God can take the patient from the Earth. Although some people do belief this, I believe that all humans can make their own choices and if someone’s choice is to die through assisted suicide because they feel that they aren’t getting any better than it should be that patient’s doctor to help get them there. Our life is all about making choices and when a terminally ill patient decides it is their time to go then their doctor can help provide drugs to help reduce the suffering and kill