“Americans are not entirely averse to suicide in cases of terminal illness. Currently six in ten Americans believe that a person has a right to end his or her own life if that person has an incurable disease” (John Benson 267). It is obvious that most Americans can agree that assisted suicide is the final decision of the terminally ill patient. When it comes down to it, many terminal patients can not make this decision because they may live in a state where assisted suicide is not legal. So far, only seven states have made assisted suicide legal and one state has legal physician suicide by court ruling, while forty-four states still consider assisted suicide illegal. Even though some people do not approve of assisted suicide because of moral …show more content…
In the book Assisted Suicide, the title of chapter one is called “Allowing Competent People to Commit Suicide Is Ethical.” Robert Young, the author of this chapter and a member of the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia says People have an interest in making important decisions about their lives in accordance with their own conception of how they want their lives to go. In exercising anatomy or self-determination people take responsibility for their lives and, since dying is a part of life, choices about the manner of their dying and the timing of their death are, for many people, part of what is involved in taking responsibility for their lives. (19-20) Choosing when to die is a very import decision that is made. This also allows the patient to choose how they want their life to go. Every terminal patient should have the right in saying how they want their life to go, along with how and when they want it to end. For a terminally ill patient, everyday life goes by while most of them have to sit there and watch it go by. This would not be a pleasant way to continue living out life. By allowing terminal patients the right to choose when they want to die, they are able to die with dignity. Dying with dignity lets the patient know that they are in charge of their …show more content…
Most terminally ill patients prefer to die in their own homes. Many patients do not have this choice and are placed in hospice care. The cost of of placing someone in hospice care can add up. Michelle Andrews’s, a health policy reporter says “But such care can be expensive, costing upward of $10,000 a month, according to the Health Affairs study. That puts hospices in a financial bind” (Andrew). Both in home care or hospice care can have a finical toll on the patient or their family. It is argued that more money should be available to those that are seriously disabled to help comfort them. When a patient has seriously made up their mind on assisted suicide, nothing can change their mind, even if it means a little more comfort being made available. George Delury, author of But What if She wants to Die? A Husband’s Diary, says “No society can afford the kinds of care and comfort needed or wanted by the ever-increasing numbers of the utterly incapacitated kept alive by medicine’s new powers” (169). When a person is terminally ill, nothing can produce enough care or comfort to make them change their mind on assisted suicide, especially when it comes down to the pain that they endure daily. Most of all, patients should not have to worry about the cost of trying to live, when in the end, they no longer want to be alive. Terminal patients do not have a long life expectancy as it