Legalizing Assisted Suicide
According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, between 1990 and 1999, a well-known advocate for physician assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian helped 130 patients end their lives. He begun the debate on assisted suicide should be legal or should be illegal. Kevorkian believed in the right to die, “The voluntary self-elimination of individual and mortally diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare” (Kevorkian). He created his own machine that would be used to give the patient a mixture of pain killers and poisons to end a patient’s life. Kevorkian was charged with first degree murder for the death of one of his patients he had helped end their life. Kevorkian tried to get a ballot
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Legalizing assisted suicide gives an option to patients who have a terminal illness where they can end their lives painlessly instead of living a short life in pain or medicated with strong pain killer. Legalizing assisted suicide doesn’t mean the patients will use the prescriptions the doctor give them to end their life, "Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Harry Chen said he expects doctors to write between 10 and 20 lethal prescriptions a year, with a smaller number of patients actually using the drugs" (Ring). Legalizing assisted suicide gives the option to people who are sick a way out, but it doesn't mean they have to use the option. Oregon has had physician assisted suicide legalized for 19 years where, "In the last 17 years in Oregon, doctors have written 1,173 prescriptions. Of these, 752 patients have used the medication to bring about their deaths and 421 have chosen not to use it, said Patricia A. Gonzalez-Portillo of Compassion & Choices" (McGreevy). Little more than half of the statics from Compassion and Choices show that the patients took the prescription. Compassion and Choices is an organization that fights for patient’s rights. The patients that did end their lives suffered from terminal illness from cancer to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) where most the patients were suffering from pain or losing their abilities to care for themselves and were put in a nursing home or hospice. Doctors give people who get sick medication, but when people are unable to beat their disease there’s not much a doctor can do besides offer hospice. Some patients would rather die than be placed in hospice care, "The "big picture" here is that currently, some human beings are being left to suffer long, painful deaths. Some would prefer to stop living - and would gladly do
Legalizing assisted suicide gives an option to patients who have a terminal illness where they can end their lives painlessly instead of living a short life in pain or medicated with strong pain killer. Legalizing assisted suicide doesn’t mean the patients will use the prescriptions the doctor give them to end their life, "Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Harry Chen said he expects doctors to write between 10 and 20 lethal prescriptions a year, with a smaller number of patients actually using the drugs" (Ring). Legalizing assisted suicide gives the option to people who are sick a way out, but it doesn't mean they have to use the option. Oregon has had physician assisted suicide legalized for 19 years where, "In the last 17 years in Oregon, doctors have written 1,173 prescriptions. Of these, 752 patients have used the medication to bring about their deaths and 421 have chosen not to use it, said Patricia A. Gonzalez-Portillo of Compassion & Choices" (McGreevy). Little more than half of the statics from Compassion and Choices show that the patients took the prescription. Compassion and Choices is an organization that fights for patient’s rights. The patients that did end their lives suffered from terminal illness from cancer to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) where most the patients were suffering from pain or losing their abilities to care for themselves and were put in a nursing home or hospice. Doctors give people who get sick medication, but when people are unable to beat their disease there’s not much a doctor can do besides offer hospice. Some patients would rather die than be placed in hospice care, "The "big picture" here is that currently, some human beings are being left to suffer long, painful deaths. Some would prefer to stop living - and would gladly do