The Negative Effects Of Assisted Suicide

A 65 year old terminal cancer patient sits and waits. Everyday her pain increases and the treatment to ease her pain has ceased to work. She wants to escape the pain; she wants to be at peace. The doctors tell her to wait and be patient because she has less than 6 months to live so, she should just fight through, but she cannot, she does not have any fight left. She has had cancer for five years, she has been on a roller coaster of good and bad days since her diagnosis. She is tired. She has requested to participate in Assisted Suicide but, unfortunately, in the state that she lives in, it is illegal. Her daughter visits her in the hospital every morning before she goes to work and seeing her daughter cry while seeing her mother in pain and

Due to movies such as “Doctor Death” which claims to depict the life of infamous Dr. Harold Shipman, who is believed have wrongfully killed and misdiagnosis over 250 of his patients, Assisted Suicide has gained a dark and skin-tangling connotation. The majority of the heart, racing movie scenes in regards to Assisted Suicide normally begin with a low, sad song and then slowly zooms into a room with a helpless patient coughing and begging a blood thirst quack doctor to “get away from them”. This unrealistic representation of Assisted Suicide is what the majority of the public has in their mind when this topic arises and as a result this topic has gained a stigma that is not factual but instead is pure fiction. However, it is not for the movie industry to help their audience figure out what is real or fake because they are in the business to make money and have to make their audience believe that whatever is on the screen is true and really happening right in front of them, to gain a profit. However it is up to the viewer/audience to separate the fiction and discover what in fact is the reality. Once again, it is a movie. Movies are made for entertainment not facts or insight. The idea here is to stop allowing the influence of outside influences, hider an already dying patient, in pain get the relief that they need. Lawmakers and voters need to think about this from a factual stand-point

It is understandably difficult to say, “yes” to such a hard topic to discuss, however the reality is that death is a natural and expected part of life. The idea of speeding up the process of death is very taboo to many, but shouldn’t the idea of allowing a patient to sit in pain, be as well? If every option has already been exercised to help the patient cope with their pain and heal yet nothing has worked, they should at least have the option to consider Assisted Suicide due to being medically inclined. In Texas and many other states, a form of Assisted Suicide is already being performed and although many believe that there is a huge difference, there is not. In Texas it is legal for a doctor to remove a patient from life support, however the patient who is on life support is still alive and they are dying when it is taken out. It is labeled under a different name and viewed as more “natural” because no lethal drugs are being injected however, in reality, whether it be Assisted Suicide or removing a patient from life support both result in the same thing; a doctor aiding their patient to not be in pain by assisting them with their death. The patient dies due to the act of the doctor removing the tube, not the patient’s body having enough and giving up so in reality in both cases the doctor is still the “murder” but it is considered biblically appropriate to remove a person from life support, right? What is the