Euthanasia

10 Pages 2474 Words

ide. Assisted suicide involves a non-suicidal person knowingly and intentionally providing a suicidal person the means or acts in some way to help that person kill him or herself (“Frequently”). The most common occurring assisted suicide is physician-assisted suicide (Battin 28). Physician-assisted suicide is when a patient can easily terminate their own life through information and/or the means of committing suicide supplied by a physician (“All”). It is illegal for a patient to be assisted when asking for help in committing suicide (“Assisted”).
Most people agree that a patient may choose to avoid suffering and pain, but they do not agree on the means used to do so (Battin 63). There are three main positions that people take on the issue of physician-assisted suicide. The first position is physician-assisted suicide should be legally available to all competent adults. Another position people take is that physician-assisted suicide should be legally available just to the terminally ill, or possible just to the terminally ill and to the severely and permanently disabled. The last position that people take is that physician-assisted suicide should be legally available to no one (149).
Some people feel that when a terminally ill person attempts to commit suicide or asks for assistance in committing suicide, they are suffering from depression, which is treatable. They feel that once the depression is treated, there is no reason for suicide or euthanasia (“Euthanasia”). The asking for assisted suicide and euthanasia from clinically depressed patients has caused people who are against euthanasia and assisted suicide to want it to be strictly controlled because there could be more assisted suicides than necessary if it was legalized (“All”).
Elderly people and AIDS patients are some of the people who most commonly attempt or commit suicide (Hendin 152). Patients with AIDS, terminal cancer, Alzheimer’s disea...