Assisted SuicideThe debate over assisted suicide is one of the most prominent and controversial topics surrounding end of life care. In the context of health care, the term assisted suicide denotes an established process guided by strict legal requirements in which terminally ill patients use compassionate grounds to request and receive lethal doses of medication. It is effectively synonymous with physician-assisted suicide, a term that explicitly specifies the involvement of patients’ doctors in prescribing the medication (Gale,p.1).
Assisted suicide is considered as a medical and ethical issue where a physician allows and helps a patient decide on the time and circumstances of his or her death.Euthanasia refers to the practice of ending a human life with that persons consent either through a specific act or by withholding life sustaining medical care. Euthanasia is different from assisted suicide, euthanasia involves a physician who administers a fatal dose of medication or withholds life saving medical treatment. With assisted suicide however, the physician merely prescribes lethal drugs that the patient then takes themselves. Euthanasia is purposely killing because of the impulse of compassion to relieve the physical pains from a person suffering from an incurable/deadly disease. When we get hit with terminal illness and/or excessive pain and suffering we don’t have the right to end our pain legally. If it was an animal though it’s normal and the right thing to do, but for humans it’s wrong and it’s a capital offense.
Across America people suffer from end of life illness. They agonize in pain. They agonize in fear. They’re in drug induced stupors. Modest people soil themselves in front of friends and family.
They lose and regain consciousness. They welcome the unconscious moments that shield them from feelings of helplessness and burdening those they love (Lee, p.1). Physician assisted suicide should not be legal at all because of that fact when you become a physician you take the hypocritical oath saying that you will never cause harm to anyone. Even though assisted suicide is legal in a few states there still haven’t been to many cases of people choosing to use it. It is also hard to find doctors willing to an abortion, so you know it is even harder trying to find a doctor willing to take part in assisted suicide. People are also very vulnerable in time of weakness, they are willing to do anything to make the pain stop. When people are in such vulnerable states of mind they are more willing to make these decisions that may or may not be the best decision for them to make.
Child euthanasia should never be practiced a child is to young to make decisions on weather or not they want to end their life, and a parent shouldn’t be able to make that decision for the child. If the child succumbs to their illness, then so be it but to assist the child in ending their life just shouldn’t happen. With all the medications and pain treatments there are available today assisted suicide is widely unneeded. Any form of suicide is frowned upon and God doesn’t like when you take your own life. Assisted suicide is just legally giving people the right to kill.
Nobody should ever willingly take another person’s life even if they do ask for the person to end their life. One of the Ten Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Kill why should we go against what God says to “help” a terminally ill person.
