Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old with a brain tumor, recently decided to end her life, and gained international publicity in the process. The current focus on this issue has brought the practice of physician assisted suicide under closer public review. While some parties are against physician assisted suicide for personal moral reasons, the option to end one’s life with the aid of a doctor should be available to everyone, and up to the individual. The hardest concept for most people to grasp concerning physician assisted suicide is the rationale behind why somebody would want to use physician assisted suicide. The overarching desire for people who opt to go this route is a desire for control. In the states where physician assisted suicide is legal, …show more content…
Defined by common law as the cessation of all vital functions, death is traditionally demonstrated by "an absence of spontaneous respiratory and cardiac functions." (Death Definition) Living is so much more than being alive though. People who are eligible for physician assisted suicide have only have six months left to live. Often, when a person has such a short life expectancy, their quality of life, as discussed above, is tremendously low. As A.C. Grayling puts it in her article, It Is Compassionate to Permit Assisted Suicide, “To believe that mere length of existence, however unbearable and painful, trumps the kindness of granting someone's request for help to end their suffering easily and quickly, is to have one's priorities utterly wrong.” It is not the quantity of time at the end of a person’s life that counts, it is the quality.
Even in the medical community there is debate over physician assisted suicide. Many doctors point to the Hippocratic Oath, and “Do no harm.” When arguing against physician assisted suicide. After all, how does assisting someone in dying even partially constitute not doing