Topic > The Pros and Cons of Physician-Assisted Suicide

In March 1998, a woman with cancer became the first known person to die under the physician-assisted suicide law in the state of Oregon when she took a lethal dose of drugs. This law does not include people who have been placed on life support nor does it include those who have not voluntarily asked doctors to help them commit suicide. Many people fear that legalizing physician-assisted suicide is irrational and violates medicine's life-saving tradition, and it has been argued that the reason why some terminally ill patients wish to commit suicide is none other than depression. Physician-assisted suicide would shorten human life or end the suffering and pain of those at the point of death; Doctor-assisted suicide needs to be solved for those who desperately need it or those who struggle with it. The main purpose of this article is to shed light on the advantages and disadvantages of medically assisted suicide and to show what moral and principled reasoning lies behind each point. “On October 27, 1997, Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows Oregon patients to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal drugs expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. (Oregon Health Authority, 2010). It is possible to construct physician-assisted suicide so that we have reasonable laws that still protect against its abuse and the value of human life. Recent laws in Oregon and the United Kingdom demonstrate that it is possible to develop reasonable laws that prevent abuse and continue to protect the value of human life. When you think of suicide, you think of a person taking their own life. But in physician-assisted suicide, this is not the case. “In physician-assisted suicide, the patient's self... at the center of the card... one's life and dying with one's dignity is a huge thing for anyone. No one should be denied the right to leave this earth if they are in constant and terrible pain. But people were also asked whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed for people in severe pain who are not terminally ill or for those with disabilities and the result was: “a solid majority – 71% – opposed the idea, with only 29% in favor of it. The results were the same as in 2011." (Hensley, 2012). The very idea of ​​medically assisted suicide is that a patient with a serious illness who has only a few months left to live can exit peacefully and without complications. Overall, physician-assisted suicide has many pros and cons, but the main issue is the patient. It should not depend on anyone except the dying patient. Only four states have legalized assisted suicide.