Assisted Suicide Should be Legal

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Assisted Suicide should be legal for terminally ill patients. It is unethical that it is illegal in forty six states for a physician to humanely assist a terminally ill patient who had the mental capacity to sign a directive stating that they wished to end their life on their own terms. Assisted suicide is by no means a new concept; in fact, it has been debated throughout the history of the world (procon.org, 2013). According to Murphy (2011), the issue really came to the forefront in the United States of America in the late eighties and early nineties when Dr. Jack Kevorkian began assisting terminally ill patients to end their lives, and although many of Dr. Kevorkian’s actions can be considered unethical, it is very hard to argue the fact that he forever changed the landscape pertaining to assisted suicide. There are many arguments both for and against the ethicality, legality, and constitutionality of assisted suicide. The following pages will attempt to validate some of the pro-assisted suicide arguments, refute some of the opposing arguments, and show the current legal landscape pertaining to assisted suicide in the United States of America.
Pro-Assisted Suicide Arguments
People that are terminally ill should have the legal right to decide to end their suffering and physicians should have the legal right to assist them. Why as a people do we see it as morally wrong to end a terminally ill patients suffering, yet at the same time we see it as morally wrong to allow a terminally ill pet to suffer? It makes absolutely no sense in the scheme of things.
According to Rubin (2010), many constitutional arguments have been brought up about the right to die, but basically the courts say that we do not have a constitutional rig...

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...rch/DeathwithDignityAct/Documents/year16.pdf
Quill, T. E. (2012). Physicians Should 'Assist in Suicide' When It Is Appropriate. Journal Of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 40(1), 57-65. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds
/detail?sid=e9258340-09a5-4204-a4e0-9bad43d576fd%40sessionmgr110&vid=1&hid=
115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=heh&AN=73931314
Rubin, E. (2010). Assisted Suicide, Morality, and Law: Why Prohibiting Assisted Suicide Violates the Establishment Clause. Vanderbilt Law Review, 63(3), 761-811. Retrieved from http://eds.
a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail?sid=ffa3e152-c7d7-448b-bf91-0599d769864c%40sessionmgr
4001&vid=1&hid=4111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=lgh&AN=51612967
State-by-State Guide to Physician-Assisted Suicide - Euthanasia - ProCon.org. (2013). Retrieved March 10, 2014 from http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php
?resourceID=000132

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