Imagine being told you only had so long to live and that you wouldn’t be able to do anything for yourself due to the amount of pain you're in. Imagine all of your family remembering you as weak and sick instead of how you lived the rest of your life, now imagine you can do something about that. This is the choice so many people in Oregon are glad to have, the choice to end their life with doctor assisted suicide when faced with a terminal illness. Steve Mason received assisted suicide after being told he only had six months to live, he says he wanted control over his death as much as his life, he will choose when and where it happens he says "I lived my life with dignity, I want to go out the same way." Assisted suicide is when a doctor prescribes a lethal prescription knowing that the patient plans to use them to commit suicide, this does not include refusing a ventilator or other life saving measures. Everyone should have a right to control their own life, so with certain provisions i believe everyone should be given the right to doctor assisted suicide when they face a disease that will be terminal guaranteeing they have no pain, and can choose where and when they pass.
The law in Oregon is very specific in how it should be used and when a doctor can prescribe these medications. In Oregon, the Death with Dignity Act allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients who have been diagnosed by not one but two physicians as having a terminal illness and less than six months to live. Patients only qualify is if they are fully conscious when making the decision and are able to administer the lethal dose without the help of anyone else. While there is no oversight to protect patients from abuse of these laws, it is their choice w...
... middle of paper ...
...ll them slowly and painfully. No one wants their family members to remember them as sick weak but rather as happy and healthy and this gives the patients a way to do that.
Works Cited
Oregon Right to Life. “Assisted Suicide in Oregon Does Not Have Adequate Safeguards.” Assisted Suicide. Ed. Noël Merino. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Current Controversies. Rpt. from “Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Experience: Safeguards Don’t Work.” 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
Roosevelt, Margot. “Choosing Their Time.” Time 28 Mar. 2005: n. pag. Print.
Smith, Michael. “There Is No Evidence of a Slippery Slope with Right-to-Die Laws.”The Right to Die. Ed. John Woodward. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2006. At Issue. Rpt. from “No ‘Slippery Slope’ Found with Physician Assisted Suicide.”MedPage Today. 2009. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
Terminally ill patients deserve the right to have a dignified death. These patients should not be forced to suffer and be in agony their lasting days. The terminally ill should have this choice, because it is the only way to end their excruciating pain. These patients don’t have
The Death with Dignity Act was passed in Oregon in 1994, and it is another option for dying with those who have terminal diseases. These people that want to die with dignity have to be seen by at least two doctors and have six or less months to live. While making the decision to use this act, the patient must be in a safe mental state to be making this decision. Currently, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and soon to be California are the only states to carry the Death with Dignity Act. (Death)
Sloss, David. "The Right to Choose How to Die: A Constitutional Analysis of State Laws Prohibiting Physician-Assisted Suicide." Stanford Law Review. 48.4 (1996): 937-973. Web. 2 March 2015.
America is a champion of the freedom of choice. Citizens have the right to choose their religion, their political affiliation, and make personal decisions about nearly every facet of their daily lives. Despite all of these opportunities, one choice society commonly ignores is that of deciding how one’s life will end. Death seems like a highly unpredictable, uncontrollable occurrence, but for the past 17 years, citizens of Oregon have had one additional option not offered to most Americans in the deciding of their end-of-life treatment. Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), passed in 1994, allows qualified, terminally-ill Oregon patients to end their lives through the use of a doctor-prescribed, self-administered, lethal prescription (Office of Disease Prevention and Epidemiology, n.d.). The nationally controversial act has faced injunctions, an opposing measure, and has traveled to the Supreme Court, however it still remains in effect today.
“On October 27, 1997 Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.” (The Oregon Health Authority, 2010). Physician assisted suicide can be constructed to have reasonable laws which still protect against its abuse and the value of human life. Recent Oregon and U.K. laws show that you can craft reasonable laws that prevent abuse and still protect the value of human life. When one thinks of suicide, we think of a person who takes their own life. But in physician-assisted suicide, this is not the case. “In physician-assisted suicide, the patient self...
Oregon is currently the only state that gives the terminally ill the right to decide how and when they want to die. This is known as “Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act” which lets ill, competent patients, who have less than six months to live, choose their preferred lethal dose of medication after they confer with two doctors. Since this right is present in only one state, it causes controversy. David Sarasohn in “No Last Rights” discusses Attorney General John Ashcroft’s challenge to the 1997 Supreme Court decision, which gave doctors in Oregon the right to prescribe federally controlled substances intended to euthanize. Ken MacQueen in “Choosing Suicide” reflects on various cases of euthanasia, differences in lawmaking on euthanasia between Canada and Oregon, and illegal acts of euthanasia.
There are only three states that allow physician-assisted suicide: Washington, Oregon, and Montana. Oregon became the first by enacting the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill patients to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. (Oregon.gov) In November of 2008 Washington became the second and in December of the same year Montana agreed and became the third. A poll was given to Oregon physicians in 1999, nurses, and social workers in 2001. The majority of physicians 51% supported the death with dignity act, 48% of nurses were in favor, and 72% of social workers were in support. (Miller) These polls clearly show that the majority of voters are in support of Physician assisted suicide.
In current society, legalizing physician assisted suicide is a prevalent argument. In 1997, the Supreme Court recognized no federal constitutional right to physician assisted suicide (Harned 1) , which defines suicide as one receiving help from a physician by means of a lethal dosage (Pearson 1), leaving it up to state legislatures to legalize such practice if desired. Only Oregon and Washington have since legalized physician assisted suicide. People seeking assisted suicide often experience slanted judgments and are generally not mentally healthy. Legalization of this practice would enable people to fall victim to coercion by friends and family to commit suicide. Also, asking for death is unfair to a doctor’s personal dogma. Some argue that society should honor the freedom of one’s choice to take his own life with the assistance of a physician; however, given the reasoning provided, it is in society’s best interest that physician assisted suicide remain illegal. Physician assisted suicide should not be legalized because suicidal people experience distorted judgments resulting in not being mentally equipped to make such a decision, people who feel they are a burden to their family may choose death as a result, and physicians should not have to go against their personal doctrines and promises.
If one is to even begin to understand the dilemma stirred up by the proposition of legalizing physician-assisted suicide, they must first understand ...
Oftentimes when one hears the term Physician Assisted Suicide (hereafter PAS) the words cruel and unethical come to mind. On October 27, 1997 Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act, this act would allow terminally ill Oregon residents to end their lives through a voluntary self-administered dose of lethal medications that are prescribed by a physician (Death with Dignity Act) . This has become a vital, medical and social movement. Having a choice should mean that a terminally ill patient is entitled to the choice to pursue PAS. If people have the right to refuse lifesaving treatments, such as chemo and palliative care, then the choice of ending life with PAS should be a choice that is allowed.
This has been shown in the fact that 1545 terminally ill patients have been prescribed the medication and only 991 have actually ingested it, thus ending their lives (Oregon Health Authority, 2016). Not only has the process of receiving the prescription been done with ease, but no individual has been required to ingest it and end their life, even though they may have already made a request for it. The DWDA has actually defied many doubts including the statement; the law could create states which have enacted the law to become “a destination for terminally ill patients seeking to die with doctor-prescribed drugs. In a decade of experience with the law, though, no such abuses have shown up” (Sandeen, 2013). Because of this false idea, some people still do not agree with the DWDA, however, because of the lack of evidence individuals are more likely to accept and support the act.
"Legalized Physician-Assisted Suicide in Oregon ñ The Second Year." Amy D. Sullivan, Katrina Hedberg, David W. Fleming. The New England Journal of Medicine. February 24, 2000. v.342, n.8
Dyer, Owen. "California 's New Assisted Suicide Law is Challenged in Court." BMJ : British Medical Journal, vol. 353, 2016.NC Live.doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i3471. Accessed 30 Sept.2016.
Pereira, J. (2011). Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide: The illusion of safeguards and controls. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
...Prevention. "Physician-Assisted Suicide Should Not Be Legalized." Opposing Viewpoints: Problems of Death. Ed. James D. Torr and Laura K. Egendorf. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Harford Technical High School - MD. 15 Mar. 2010 .