Hello fellow Pathway Students and friends,
I hope all is well with you all.This post mainly is for my Provident Living Project. It also is to let others read my thoughts on this subject and if individuals know what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints view are on this subject.
Is everyone ready to know what my topic is? It is one that I have thought about immensely. The following is from an Essay I am still writing for my English class. Please read and make your comments after you have read the whole Essay. The subject is...
Should Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide (Death) Be Legal?
Individuals should be able to decide for themselves to die
with dignity and with as little pain as possible because they are the ones who
know how much pain they are really in. I will make statements based on facts
that will support my view on Assisted Suicide. To be fair, I will present both
sides of each argument to let you see why It is up to each one of us to decide
for ourselves.
I would like to start with the
Right to die argument. According to the website Procon.org. The ACLU on
December 10, 1996 made this statement 1 "The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid
excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction
of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of
this right is as central to personal autonomy and bodily integrity as rights
safeguarded by this Court's decisions relating to marriage, family
relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the refusal or
termination of life-saving medical treatment.” As you can see the ACLU was
trying to tie the right to die in with the right to refuse life-saving
treatments. The problem with this point is the fact that the U.S Supreme Court
issued this majority opinion on June 26, 1997 concerning the case of Washington
v. Glucksberg. 2 “The
history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and
continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That
being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted 'right' to
assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest
protected by the Due Process Clause." Because of this ruling it made it illegal to
help some on to die, even under the care of a doctor. This leads me to my next
point of patient suffering.
It should be left to each individual the
decision to end a terminally ill patient’s suffering at their End of Life. As
stated before we have a right to refuse life-saving treatments if we are a
competent terminally ill adult. Logic tells me that same person should be able
to administer the medicines needed to let them die without the pain. 3 “The
argument is over the right to die with a doctor’s help at the time and in the
manner of your own choosing. As yet only a handful of European countries,
Colombia and five American states allow some form of doctor-assisted dying. But
draft bills, ballot initiatives and court cases are progressing in 20 more
states and several other countries.” These statistics are encouraging if you
are on the side with letting each person decided for themselves. The following
Quote comes from the website www.economist.com.
4” The popular desire for assisted dying is beyond question. The
Economist asked Ipsos MORI to survey people in 15 countries on whether doctors
should be allowed to help patients to die, and if so, how and when. Russia and
Poland are against, but we find strong support across America and western
Europe for allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients with terminal
diseases. In 11 out of the 15 countries we surveyed, most people favored
extending doctor-assisted dying to patients who are in great physical suffering
but not close to death.” The last part of this quote worries me. We should not end
a life just because we are in pain and not terminally ill. This argument has so
many variables we can’t write the laws needed to cover ever possibility.
I want to conclude my essay by
making my stance of this subject clear. From my own personal witness of my
mother dying from the fourth battle with cancer, I know she wanted to die
peacefully because she told me so. You see, my mother knew how much pain I have
been living with since I lost my leg in 2003. The two of us had many talks
about the subject of dying without pain. We both said that given the choice when
there was nothing more to do, we would like to be allowed to decide to die
without the pain. A competent, terminally ill person should be able to decide
for themselves. Another thing a person should do is their wishes into a will
for all to see, this way everyone would know the person’s choice if they are no
longer able to communicate.
Works
Cited
1 “Should euthanasia or
physician-assisted suicide be legal?” Procon.org website Pros v. Cons Link
2 “Should euthanasia or
physician-assisted suicide be legal?” Procon.org website Pros v. Cons Link
3 Copyright ©
The Economist Newspaper Limited 2016. All rights reserved. www.economist.com
4 Copyright
© The Economist Newspaper Limited 2016. All rights reserved. www.economist.com
