Pros And Cons Of Legalizing Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician-assisted suicide also, known as assisted suicide, involves a physician who provides a person with knowledge or means or both to commit suicide. In physician-assisted suicide, the physicians provide counsel about the lethal doses of drug needed to end life, and prescribes such lethal doses or supplies the drug. The physician is involved indirectly in the life ending process in the physician-assisted suicide. There are many issues that have increased concern in response to this controversial topic. If a person wants to end his or her life for any reason is in the state where physician-assisted suicide is illegal, then he or she may have some legal options to hasten his or her death, including cessation of medical treatment and refusing to eat. There is no law in the U.S. that prevents from making the decision to stop eating, even if the decision results in the death of the individual. To the contrary, US law provides that patients may refuse medical treatment under most circumstances, as a consequence of their liberty interests that arise from the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution (Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 US 261 (1009). Thus, for moral or legal issue there is always some question arising: Is the society prepared to accept assisted suicide? Should assisted suicide be

However, there are a few European countries that have legalized assisted suicide. They are Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland and England and Wales. In America, physician-assisted suicide is illegal in all states except for Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana (Moody, 2015, p. 278), and California (NPR, 2015). Oregon was the first U.S. state in which assisted suicide was legally permitted. In recent years, American’s the inclination towards physician-assisted suicide is increasing. Almost 70% of Americans favor physician-assisted suicide (Dugan,