Physician Assisted Suicide Persuasive Speech

We will all die one day. But It’s a complete mystery to us how or when, that is unless you have a terminal or life shortening illness/condition. It’s hard to imagine living knowing your life will end soon. What’s not very hard to imagine is that these patients, despite dying soon, don’t see the point in suffering any longer and want to end their life. This is totally fair and understandable considering these patients could have been suffering with their condition or illness for their whole lives. Some who know death is approaching can plan and choose to carry out the rest of their lives at home if able to. Others go with hospice care. Some just want to live the last months of their life as normal as possible and be with their family and loved

According to the National Library of Medicine, reports of suicide and euthanasia date back to more than two millennia in ancient Greece and Rome. Also, according to the same source, in 1870, Samuel Williams first proposed using anesthetics and morphine to intentionally end a patient’s life. On through the next 35 years debates about the ethics and morality of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide raged in the United States and Britain. Leading to an Ohio bill to legalize euthanasia in 1906, where the bill was ultimately defeated. Way later in 1980 the first “right to die” and assisted suicide advocacy organization named hemlock society was founded. Their main mission was to make assisted suicide legal, although courts and the law have long been against the idea of it. They never did make any real legal progress as a movement but did introduce new perspectives relating to euthanasia. Their slogan was “good life, good death”. Implying that ending your life on your own terms makes your death “better”. The hemlock society were not the only ones is history to advocate for physician assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian,

The primary role of physicians is to heal and alleviate suffering, not to hasten death. There Is something prominent in medicine called The Hippocratic oath. it is an oath of ethics historically taken by physicians that is still prevalent today. The oath states the professional conduct and obligations of doctors and the importance of ethical standards in medicine. It talks about the doctors important and strict role as healer. In this oath there is a line stating: “I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life.” Allowing physicians to assist in suicide could blur the sacred relationship between doctors and patients for good. Patients could fear that that may be receiving lethal drugs instead of being provided the appropriate care. The critics of the assisted suicide procedure argue that such a process devalues human life and tends to promote suicide as an alternative to personal suffering. It blurs the line between healing and dying. In claiming that the procedure allows patients to have dignity at death is flawed because the purpose of the medical profession is to ensure a dignified life. In accordance with the physician’s code of ethics or Hippocratic oath, physicians are not allowed to do harm to their patients because their role is to provide a dignified life with health to the community. Instead of helping people kill themselves, we should offer them premium medical care and solace human presence.