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Compare Relativism And Physician Assisted Suicide

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Relativism and Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) In 2014, Brittany Maynard a brain cancer patient moved from California to Oregon to legally end her life. As reported by The New York Times, the 29 year old schoolteacher, who had brain cancer, received international attention for her decision to move to Oregon, where terminally ill patients have been allowed to take drugs to die since 1997 (nytimes.com, “Who May Die? California Patients and Doctors Wrestle With Assisted Suicide”). The debate of whether it is ethical or unethical to have a physician assisted suicide has been an ongoing debate that has never reached its final conclusion. It probably never will with people having such different mindsets, backgrounds and religions that they have lived by, …show more content…
Physician Assisted Suicide is exactly what it sounds like, The voluntary termination of one's own life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. One way to handle an ethical issue is with a moral theory called relativism. Relativism is the view that what is right is determined by the individual or culture (Shafer-Landau, 292-3). In today’s society many people would argue that there is no difference between physician assisted suicide and suicide it self. The people are exactly right though, the only differences between the two is it comes down to with or without medical assistance. In this paper, I will demonstrate the inherent weakness of relativism as an ethical theory by showing reasons of why people would think physician assisted suicide is ethical, by bringing in an outside source. Then proceed to end the essay by by offering a valid argument that shows that physician assisted suicide, that is

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