Suicide is the act or instance of taking one's own life voluntarily or intentionally, especially if that person is not sensible. Euthanasia is the act or practice of killing individuals who are hopelessly sick or injured for reasons of mercy. Doctor-assisted suicide is a term used to describe the act of a doctor or physician providing direct or indirect means of assisting someone in taking their own life (“Terminology of Assisted Dying”). There are 2 types of euthanasia; passive euthanasia which is withholding life-sustaining treatment either before or after it has been initiated and active euthanasia, which is "taking steps to end your life, as in suicide, handling the action yourself" (Humphry 20). It is an explicit act such as writing a lethal prescription or a directly injecting a lethal dose. Approximately 30,000 Americans kill themselves every year. This means that the rate of suicide is about 13.42 per 100,000 people (“Suicide Statistics.”). This rate is just the average, and it varies greatly among sexes and races. The terminally ill are most closely associated with the doctor-assisted suicide issue. Many in this group argue that once all medical care has failed, then one has the right to hasten death to avoid pain and suffering. If a person is going to inevitably die from a painful disease, then that person should have the right to decide when, where, and how death comes. Assisted suicide is usually accomplished by a family member or physician providing the adequate means for committing suicide. This is very common with persons who do not have the ability to commit suicide on their own (Lovelace). Does humanity truly have the “right to die” or should it be completely illegal? The main factors to answering this controversial question is religion and culture history, statutes and legislative law, basic morality, and public opinion.
Religion & Culture
Many ancient cultures embraced and accepted suicide. In Greece, suicide was considered acceptable if one's health failed or when faced with scandal or shame. If a person was able to convince authorities that his or her death was warranted, then a lethal dose of the poison called hemlock was prescribed. The modern day Hemlock Society, the largest right to die society, was named after this poison. The Christian church did not even legislate against suicide until the sixth century because of the persistence of Saint Augustine. He was appalled by the high number of suicides and urged the bishops to establish a law against it. He based his argument from the sixth commandment of thou shalt not kill, but most of his ideas came from Plato's Phaedo. This was his reasoning: And because each soul is immortal, every life is valuable. Since life itself is a gift from God, to reject it is to reject him and to frustrate his will; to kill his image is to kill him-which means a one-way ticket to eternal damnation (Uhlmann 61). The actual mentions of suicides in the Bible were not recorded as being wrong or being crimes against God. If intent is argued, then it can be said that even Jesus Christ committed a type of suicide. According to the Bible, he was sent down to sacrifice his life for others. There is an account of reported voluntary euthanasia (again it means, in which one person asks another to kill them, apparently in order to ease the first person's suffering) involving King Saul and an Amalekite (2 Samuel 1:1-16). The unnamed Amalekite tells King David that he killed Saul at Saul's request, as Saul was injured in battle. David's response is to kill the Amalekite for touching God's anointed. If euthanasia were a beneficial practice, David would have rewarded the Amalekite, not sentenced him to death.
Statutes and Legislative Law
Some recent court cases have changed laws and some attitudes towards doctor-assisted suicide. Two cases reached the United States Supreme Court in January 1997 and were decided simultaneously on June 26, 1997. The two cases were Washington State versus Glucksberg and Vacco versus Quill of New York State. The ruling in both cases backed the two state statutes which banned doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Those courts had found that the statutes, which prohibited doctors from prescribing lethal medication to competent, terminally ill adults, violated the 14th Amendment. In striking the appellate decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court found that there was no constitutional "right to die," but left it to individual states to enact legislation permitting or prohibiting physician-assisted suicide. (“Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 US 702 – Supreme Court 1997”)
According to the article, “The Kevorkian Verdict” by PBS, only one state, Oregon, has legalized assisted suicide. The Oregon statute, which went into effect in October 1997, provides that a doctor may prescribe, but not administer, a lethal dose of medication to a patient who has less than six months to live. Two doctors must agree that the patient is mentally competent and that the decision was voluntary. As of April 1999, 23 patients were given drugs under the statute, and 15 of them used the drugs to commit suicide. A report released by the Oregon state Health Division reviewing the first year of the law's implementation found that the law was working well and had not been subject to abuse. At the government level, the main enactment tending to this issue, as of April 1999, is the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act. This law forbids government cash from being utilized as a part of help of physician-suicide.
In 1990 the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Cruzan versus Missouri Department of Health that an individual had the right to avoid unwanted medical treatment to include life-sustaining treatment. In that same year Doctor Jack Kevorkian, a self-proclaimed crusader of the doctor-assisted suicide debate in Michigan, helped a 54-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease to commit suicide. He connected the carbon monoxide emitting exhaust to enter the inside of a van to kill her. (Zeinert 85) Kevorkian has been tried 5 times. Jack Kevorkian was initially prosecuted with violating the state statute, in addition to first-degree murder and delivering a controlled substance without a license. The assisted suicide charge was dropped, however, and he was eventually convicted of second degree murder and delivering a controlled substance without a license. The opinions on the actions of Kevorkian remain as divided as the issue he represents. He provided a recognizable face which people still associate today. He also provided more controversy for this issue than anyone else. Doctor Kevorkian "undoubtedly performed a notable public service by forcing the medical profession to re-think its attitude on euthanasia" (Humphry 140).
Physicians and Morality
Doctor-assisted suicide is required for those who are going to commit suicide and desire a more humane and dignified method. Self-inflicted suicide is usually gruesome and usually comes unexpectedly to family and friends. Doctor-assisted suicide “allows for more planning and a preset adjustment period for family members to cope with the loss of a loved one”. Doctors are able to analyze a patient's mental and physical pain health before determining whether suicide is an available option. It is important that the proper authorities be sure that the patient is of sound mind and judgment. Independent psychiatric evaluations are also available to ensure that no mistakes are made. If suicide has become the final option for a patient, then organized and legal methods should be in place to assist those who need it. (Boudreau) Adam Cohen stated in a Time Magazine article that polls suggest that up to 75% of Americans back mercy killing, even though most state efforts to make it legal have not succeeded.
Doctors are taught that human life is to be saved at all costs. It is no surprise that most doctors are opposed to legalizing doctor-assisted suicide. One article states a portion of the American Medical Association's policy statement on physician-assisted suicide: It is critical that the medical profession redouble its efforts to ensure that dying patients are provided optimal treatment for their pain and other discomfort. The use of more aggressive comfort care measures, including greater reliance on hospice care, can alleviate the physical and emotional suffering that dying patients experience. (Katz 1) Perhaps it is time that doctors realize that people wish to be treated like human beings instead of lab experiments. It is impossible to save every person. It is impossible to cure every disease in time. Many terminally ill patients have accepted these facts and just wish to die a peaceful death. Society acknowledges that doctors do in fact save lives. Modern medicine has positively changed the quality of life for everyone in the United States, but sometimes losses are to be cut. Most terminally ill patients rarely see the outside of a hospital and are constantly being pumped with powerful medication and/or radiation. This is no way to live. Modern medicine does not extend life; it only prolongs death. It seems as if the medical community has single-handedly made the choice that people are to be kept alive for as long as possible. If doctors can make a decision to place a person on life-sustaining equipment, then it seems reasonable that an individual should have the right to decide when to die.
Con
According to the article, “Reasons to Oppose Physician-Assisted Suicide”, opponents of assisted suicide argue that better hospice care and stronger pain relievers are the alternatives to suicide. They argue that it is unacceptable because it is immoral. However, it seems difficult for someone who has not been directly faced with or affected by this issue to have a valid opinion. The bottom line is that individuals who are in this situation absolutely have the right to decide their own fate. It is hypocritical to believe that individuals have the legal right to choose life or death for an unborn child yet not for their own life.
Doctor's believe that they are to save lives instead of helping to end them. They argue that doctor-assisted suicide is an oxymoron. If a doctor's sole purpose is to save lives, then how can they be expected to assist individuals in killing themselves? But other doctors believe that, pharmaceutical companies have made trillions of dollars on the elderly by inventing new and more potent chemicals to keep the body from expiring.
Every day patients demonstrate their faith in the medical profession by taking medications and agreeing to treatment on the advice of their physicians. Patients trust that the physicians' actions are in their best interest with the goal of protecting life. Society thinks that physician-assisted suicide endangers this trust relationship by making physicians actors in a patient's death.
It is said that, elder financial abuse is a documented fact, costing victims an estimated $2.6 billion each year and can serve as a catalyst for other types of elder abuse. Society-approved death puts elders at risk for abuse through include being coerced, pressured or even forced into suicide (“Reasons to Oppose Physician-Assisted Suicide”). Citizens also say that suicide is not medical care. “Escalating health-care costs, coupled with a growing elderly population”, set the stage for an American culture eager to embrace alternatives to expensive, long-term medical care. They think the “so-called” statement "right to die" may soon become the "duty to die" as our senior, disabled and depressed family members are pressured into ending their lives, family members believe their are better media alternatives, “there is always more we can do” (Boudreau).
In conclusion, does humanity truly have the “right to die” or should it be completely illegal? If it should be legalized or not, Suicide throughout all societies is imminent. It is especially guaranteed to occur in high rates among those who are facing a slow and painful death . Special considerations are necessary for this group of people (Lovelace). This group of people deserves that right when modern science and medicine has failed in its efforts. Any individual faced with inevitable death deserves the right to decide the time and place (“TheBigPictureRT”).
In over 400 years before the time of Christ, Sophocles stated that death is not the worst fear, but rather when we wish to die and cannot (Torr 12). Based on all the research done, including people’s personal experiences, history, law, and as well as the doctor’s experiences; we conclude that doctor assisted suicide should be legalized everywhere because it helps stop prolonged painful death. Even Stephen Hawkings the theoretical physicist believes that we should use doctor assisted suicide, "We don't let animals suffer, so why humans?" (“Stephen Hawking Speaks out about Assisted Suicide.”).