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Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

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Assisted Suicide Is it moral or ethically right for a doctor to have an ability to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is undergoing severe pain and suffering? My personal position is that if we believe that there is a human right to life, then we must accept that people have their own right to dispose of that life whenever and however they may choose. I do not believe that telling people they have a right to life while denying them the method to end life has any ethical consistency. I believe everyone has the right to not suffer therefore why I believe in the pros of assisted suicide. I have weighed the pros and cons for each side to show the controversy each point can have. The main topics are an individual’s “right to die”, patient …show more content…
It is the voluntary termination of one's own life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. Physician-assisted suicide is the practice of providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the sole intention of ending his or her own life due to a terminal diagnosis. Doctors allow patients to end their lives by prescribing a drug called pentobarbital. They give the lethal dose of this sleep aid which is meant to be consumed at one time. The pentobarbital causes the patient to slip into a coma in usually about five minutes. After about half an hour, the patient stops breathing while feeling no pain or discomfort. Before being able to be eligible for this, you must be diagnosed with a terminal cancer, in addition to seeing a psychologist who decides whether or not you are in the right state of mind to make this life ending decision. After being signed off as eligible, all the laws for assisted suicide and against it come into …show more content…
Just because it is legal in Oregon and not here in New Jersey does not mean it should not be addressed. A sick patient sometimes ask for help in ending their life, and some doctors may hint vaguely how to go about it but because of laws, medical licenses and regulations, they cannot say much more. Every medical professional wants to help their patients but does not want to get in trouble with the law or lose their medical license. Family members and loved ones have to individually comprehend assisted suicide with not much knowledge or advice from doctors. That's what still frustrates Hope Arnold whose husband suffered from terminally ill stomach cancer for years. She says throughout the ten months her husband J.D. Falk was being treated for stomach cancer in 2011, no one would talk straight with them. Arnold said "All the nurses, all the doctors…Everybody we ever interacted with, no one said, 'You're dying.'" Until eventually, one doctor did. And that's when her husband, who was just 35, started to plan his death. Because the family lived in Pennsylvania, where it is illegal to pursue assisted suicide, had to plan a time and day where they would overdose him with the morphine they were given from the hospital to make him more comfortable at home on hospice care. The feeling that they murdered their husband, father, loved one all due to the fact that the state they lived in did not allow

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