The Right to Assisted Suicide Essay - 937 Words

You’re visiting the hospice for the twenty-third day in a row; the soft squeaking of the linoleum and the gentle buzz of the fluorescents in the waiting room greet you as you walk in. You’re visiting your Grandmother, whose lung cancer has entered metastasis, and has been slowly spreading throughout her body; she has already lost movement in her arms. She is a hollow shell of the woman she once was; her once bright eyes have been fading steadily every day, and her bubbly demeanor has become crushed and gravelly, and every day before you leave, she will only say, â€Å"Kill me.† What would you do in this situation? Would you break the law in order to respect your elder’s wishes? It is a cruel reality we live in when ability to choose the time†¦show more content†¦According to Simon Jenkins, a writer for the British newspaper The Guardian, states that â€Å"there cannot be a human freedom so personal as ordering the circumstances of ones own dea th...[yet]... the near universal desire ‘to be allowed to die in my own home’ is willfully disregarded† (Jenkins 1). By allowing yourself to have life, one would assume that this gives you freedom over other aspects of your existence, including when it should end. By denying the rights to achieve liberty, achieve happiness, and define our lives, are we not denying the rights governments around the world were founded on? It is the denial of these rights that allows the mental stress felt by patients to turn into physical pain. Physical pain felt by patients is most often not caused by their injuries, but by neglect. Montana’s Death with Dignity Act, as stated by bioethicist Jacob Appel, is a hollow victory, as no physicians are willing to give consented assistance. A physician neglecting to assist a patient with committing suicide is more damaging than healing; it causes the patient to suffer through their injuries while searching out another doctor to a ssist them. This is what happened with Janet Murdock: suffering from ovarian-cancer, she traveled throughout Montana, only to be denied assisted-suicide from every physician she met (Appel 1). Her pain was exacerbated by a law that was enacted to help relieve theShow MoreRelatedThe Rights Of Assisted Suicide966 Words   |  4 PagesDying Your Way: The Right to Choose Assisted Suicide Introduction Death has a finality to it that gives even the most cynical person a reason to pause. The possibility of death is always present, the elephant in the room. Prior to the twentieth century, before the leaps and bounds of modern medical care, people worried about the possibility of dying more often. Childhood diseases could strike and take a beloved child away at any moment, affecting two or more homes in the same community. Today childrenRead MoreThe Right Of Assisted Suicide Essay1615 Words   |  7 PagesThe right to assisted suicide is a huge topic that worries humans all around the usa. The debates go from side to side approximately whether or not a death patient has the proper to die with the assistance of a physician. some are in opposition to it due to religious and ethical motives. Others are for it because of their compassion and respect for the dying. Physicians are also divided on the issue. They differ where they area the line that separates alleviation from death--and k illing. for manyRead MoreThe Rights Of Assisted Suicide Essay1584 Words   |  7 PagesThe Right To Die With Dignity Assisted suicide is the act of committing suicide with the help of another person or doctor, most commonly referred to as Physician Assisted Suicide. It is currently legal in Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, California, and Colorado. Considering the increase of people dying from terminal illnesses, assisted suicide should be legalized across the nation. People that suffer from a terminal illness that can’t be cured or treated and will result in death have the rightRead MoreThe Right to Assisted Suicide1548 Words   |  6 Pagescontemplate your options for living out the rest of your life. You wonder if you will be able to cope with losing yourself, your independence, your identity, your dignity. But what choice do you have? Euthanasia, also referred to as assisted suicide or physician assisted suicide or more commonly known as mercy killing is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as the act or practice of killing hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasonsRead MoreThe Rights Of Assisted Suicide1829 Words   |  8 PagesThe â€Å"right-to-die† has been controversial for a long time and is continuously in debate. Some of the arguments in favor of laws allowing individuals to choose include - Anyone coming into hospital in an emergency has the option of a DNR (do not resuscitate). People who go into comas may leave living wills instructing doctors not to use any extreme life-saving measures (this includes feeding tubes). Perhaps dying with dignity is controversial b/c it seems like a more conscious choice. People can predetermineRead MoreThe Rights Of Physician Assisted Suicide1347 Words   |  6 PagesThe Right to Die By: Antony Makhlouf Antony Makhlouf PHR 102-006 Contemporary Moral Issues Final Paper The Right to Die Physician-assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia, has been a hot topic as of late. If you do not know what this is, physician-assisted suicide is the taking of ones life. This usually occurs when a patient is in a irreversible state, and must live through a tube. With multiple cases occurring in the past, current and the more to occur the in the future, this looksRead MoreAssisted Suicide : Rights And Responsibilities1570 Words   |  7 PagesAssisted Suicide: Rights and Responsibilities A woman suffering from cancer became the first person known to die under the law on physician-assisted suicide in the state of Oregon when she took a lethal dose of drugs in March, 1998. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act passed a referendum in November, 1997, and it has been the United States only law legalizing assisted suicide since then. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, more than 4,000 doctors have approved of the assisted suicideRead MoreAssisted Suicide : Right Or Wrong?880 Words   |  4 PagesHillard 01/14/15 Nursing Roles I Professor Rodgers Assisted Suicide: Right or Wrong? The article I selected is called Assisted Suicide: Right or Wrong? By: Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez. This article talked about a researcher named Matthew Donnely. For over 30 years Matthew conducted research on x-rays. Matthew was diagnosed with a terminal skin cancer. During his battle with cancer he had lost his nose, his left hand, two fingers on his right hand and part of his jaw (Andre Velasquez). Matthew’sRead MoreThe Right to Die in Assisted Suicide2517 Words   |  11 PagesInitial Thoughts on Physician Assisted Suicide (February 28th, 2013) The promotion of physician assisted suicide has sparked a debate throughout the world. From my point of view, assisted suicide is doctors assist patients who could not endure the pain of diseases and are voluntarily given lethal amount of substances resulting in death. However, physician assisted suicide might be considered to be deviant in many countries currently due to the religions, laws and the negative image. AlsoRead MoreEssay The Right to Assisted Suicide2100 Words   |  9 PagesThe Right to Assisted Suicide    Recently, a terminally ill British woman lost a high-profile court battle to take her own life in a test case of whether Britain will permit assisted suicide.   Wheelchair-bound Diane Pretty, a 43-year-old mother of two, has waged a lengthy legal fight to allow her husband to kill her without being prosecuted. Pretty, who contracted motor neuron disease two years ago, which is a muscle-wasting disease, lost her bid to have an assisted suicide.   She has had