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Physician Assisted Suicide Pros And Cons Essay

2010 Words9 Pages

As the United States continues to grow and develop for the better, multiple issues still challenge and impact the people. Within these numerous issues, physician assisted suicide (PAS) has also been recently tacked onto that list. In today’s society, PAS is commonly debated due to ethical, emotional, and legal reasons involved throughout the topic. Each of these topics consist of a variety of benefits and drawbacks, all of which are constantly bickered about. Through ethical reasoning, emotional testimonials, and legality cases, both those in support of and those who oppose physician assisted suicide create their own arguments from differing viewpoints.

Euthanasia vs. Physician Assisted Suicide Euthanasia is the medical practice of taking someone’s life due to a terminal illness in a pain free way to end the suffering of a dying patient. Doctors would enforce this practice of deliberately killing the ill patient by using a lethal injection, on scene, with no second chances. The …show more content…

The very first attempt was in the early 1900s, when Ohio tried to pass a bill which allowed assisted dying, and of course it failed. However, it really started in the 1990s, when Jack Kevorkian, also known as Dr. Death, created a “suicide machine” to help over 130 people take their own lives (Pickert). He eventually spent over five years in prison. Later in 1997, the government ruled that physician assisted suicide is not a right given to Americans under the Constitution. Numerous people wanted, and continue to want, a say in when and how they died, rather than letting their terminal illness, such as cancer, decide. Ever since then, there has been countless attempts to legalize PAS, and countless times that they have been denied. However, some states’ efforts have succeeded. For example, five states currently allowed assisted suicide, including Oregon, California, Vermont, Washington, and

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Although, this practice has been deemed as, “…there is no constitutional right to commit suicide, with or without assistance” by the Supreme Court under the case “People v. Kevorkian” (2). Several states such as Oregon have adopted a policy of PAD, which then in turn allows patients, under a specific set of circumstances, to end their lives as they please, and in doing so relinquishing themselves from a world of demise and agonizing torture. In the state of Oregon a patient must be, “Terminally ill, have six months or less to live, make two oral requests for assistance in dying…” and much more (8).

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