Assisted Suicide
Tyler Griffin
Mrs. Gray
Honors English 3-2
4/17/13
In America assisted suicide is a very controversial topic, one of the most controversial is physician assisted suicide or P.A.S, this involves a physician providing a patient at his or her own request with a legal dose of medication, which the patient self-administers(Scoccia 32). In other forms of assisted suicide the patient himself performs the last death- causing act, for example the physician might connect the patient to a machine that dispenses a lethal injection, and the patient is the one who pushes the button to release the fatal fluid into the body. In addition moral shock appeals are not unknown to the P.A.S movement. Those who oppose any measures permitting assisted suicide argue that it’s our moral duty to preserve all life; they also argue that allowing people to assist others in destroying their life’s would violate our fundamental duty to respect human life. They also argue that helping a patient maintain control and end suffering is an ethical act. People have many freedoms, and the right to die should be no different than the right to vote, freedom of speech and any other right.
Supporters of Assisted suicide have an even stronger point; they claim that all people have a moral right to choose freely what they will do with their lives as long as they inflict no harm on others. People should also have the right to make their own decisions about ending their own life in the same way they can choose or refuse other types of medical therapies. Too many this is not a wrong or right situation, because we have the right to vote, freedom of speech and the right to bear arms, why shouldn’t we have the right to die (Scoccia 33). Autonomy, which is the principle that shows and describes the rights of the people who make their own decisions, is perhaps the strongest argument in favor of Assisted Suicide. . Why shouldn’t society allow assisted suicide, it doesn't hurt anybody else, just imagine yourself in a position where you didn't want to be of this world anymore, and your decision was final. According to supporters keeping a person that is suffering is very inhumane (Scoccia 34).
Physician assisted suicide is legal in only a few places. U.S Supreme Court ruled that a ban on P.A.S was not unconstitutional, so this left the door open for laws permitting this practice (Scoccia 33). People in legalization who are supporters are responding to the fear of being in terrible pain and agony, of being hooked up to life-support equipment, and of becoming a financial or emotional drain on their families (Erek 51). They fear becoming dependent on others or having a very poor quality of life. Many doctors or physicians that support this issue argue that it should be allowed to those who are terminally ill, but shouldn’t be allowed to those that are healthy (Soccia 33).
There are many forms of assisted suicide and another not as controversial as P.A.S, is Continuous sedation or known as C.S. This is where at the end of life a physician uses sedatives to reduce or take away the consciousness of a patient until death would then follow (Scoccia 32). This is a medication that terminates or brings a patient to a slow but painless death. One that is very similar is Euthanasia which is described as the administration of drugs with the explicit intention of ending a patient’s life at the patient’s explicit request (Erek 50). Continuous sedation may have the upper hand over P.A.S in that it might be less susceptible to abuse, and the doctor in the white coat, adds social sanction top the act of intentionally ending someone’s life (Scoccia 36). According to the code of ethics, containing C.S, they state that applying C.S at the end of life should be a last resort and should be only for dying patients with a very short life expectancy (Scoccoa 34). Many people that argue think that assisted suicide is inhumane, but it seems too many fairly clear that there is