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Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

764 Words4 Pages

Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is the process by which a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing them with the necessary means and information to end their lives. The debate to legalize physician-assisted suicide has been ongoing for many years. In the U.S only four states have legalized PAS: Oregon, Montana, Vermont, and Washington. The purpose of PAS is to end a person’s life that is suffering from an illness that will impair the way in which they live their lives. The debate of physician-assisted suicide began in the year 1997, when the U.S Supreme Court recognized no constitutional right to PAS and allowed state legislatures to make decisions for themselves. The first decision was made in the court decision of Compassion …show more content…

Ms. Rodriguez had been suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and was told by her physician that she would live anywhere from two to fourteen months. She would soon lose her ability to speak, walk, swallow, and move her body, confining her to a bed. Sue Rodriguez sought an order to end her life by her choosing when the time was right. The case of Ms. Rodriguez was similar to other patients at the time. Many patients who are terminally ill seek to end their lives for specific reasons. The pain and suffering associated with terminal illnesses takes a toll on patients. Individuals do not want to be a burden to their families and want to end their lives due to the pain they are going through. Knowing that their lives will soon come to an end, the patients request proper instructions from their doctors to end their lives. Oregon, one of the first states to legalize assisted suicide has had 340 cases of PAS. There has not been a surge of people moving into Oregon to end their lives and not many states have followed in Oregon’s footsteps. Doctors granted one in six requests for lethal prescriptions, and only one in 10 requests resulted in death, according to a survey of more than 2,600 Oregon physicians in the Feb. 24, 2000, New England Journal of Medicine. Of the 221 requests in the survey, 21% were denied because patients had symptoms of depression. Oregon’s policy for assisted suicide provides a careful way in which PAS can be implemented across the

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Physician- assisted suicide is the practice of providing terminally ill patients a prescription for medication to use with the intention of ending his or her life. According to the article “What’s Really Involved in Physician-Assisted Death?” pain was not the main reason patients made the request of physician-assisted suicide but ratherm loss of autonomy and dignity, inability to enjoy life and regular activities and other types of mental distress were the dominant motivations, the study found. Physician- assisted suicide should be legal for terminally ill patients. The patient’s family will not have to suffer and want have to watch the patients suffer for so long. Before starting physician- assisted suicide, it is made sure of that this is what the patient truly wants.

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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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