Imagine a child is given a puppy to care for when he is young.  The child raises the dog as his own and for years training him on his own. The child developed a close bond with the dog that he’s known his entire life.  But then all of a sudden, the dog gets sick, and the vet says it has no way of fully recovering.  Instead of opting to have the dog suffer, the child knows that he’s doing the right thing by having the dog put down and relieved of its pain.  If dogs are suffering from a terminally ill disease they are usually put down to spare them of the pain and suffering.  Yet if humans are terminally ill, it is “morally wrong” for them to end their suffering.  Humans should have the same opportunity that dogs have to be eased of their pain at the end of their life.  There are too many people that are forced to suffer toward the end of their days in excruciating pain.  In today’s society, medical technology has advanced to a point where diseases that used to kill people can now be treated, and the lifespan of humans has continued to rise throughout the years.  But as these new treatments are discovered and then revealed to the public, they are sometimes faced with skepticism of the morality of the treatment.  One medical treatment that has always faced criticism from the public is ‘assisted-suicide’ or ‘aid-in-dying’.  

Assisted suicide is “suicide by a patient facilitated by means (as a drug prescription) or by information (as an indication of a lethal dosage) provided by a physician aware of the patient's intent” (Webster).  Assisted-suicide takes a lot of heat from religious and political groups alike that believe it is immoral to take ones life even in the case of someone terminally ill that is suffering.  However, assisted-suicide is a necessary medical treatment in today’s society due to the amount of people that die suffering of terminally ill diseases.  Assisted-suicide should be legalized in America, because there are too many people that are terminally ill in hospitals for months or even years that have to suffer because there are no other options.

Assisted-suicide has always been a highly debated topic, but really made a name for itself in June 1997 when “the U.S. Supreme court ruled that state laws banning physician assisted-suicide do not violate the constitution in the case of Washington vs. Glucksberg” (CNN).  Then on October 27, 1997 Oregon passes its “Death with Dignity Act” by a 51% vote legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Oregon (CNN).  Since then, assisted-suicide has been legalized in three other states; Vermont, Washington, and California (CNN).  It is also legalized in Montana but only when mandated in a court ruling (CNN).  This is not a good statistic that only five states have made any progress toward legislation in making assisted-suicide a more common treatment in America.  The need for this treatment in today’s society is too high for it not to be accessible to more people.  In 2015, in the United States there were a reported 614,348 deaths by heart diseases, 591,699 deaths by cancer and 147,101 deaths by chronic lower respiratory diseases (CDC).  These numbers are insanely high considering Oregon only fulfilled 991 requests for assisted-suicide since in 2015, Vermont has fulfilled 24 since 2013, and Washington has fulfilled 725 since 2014 (CNN).  There is only a small amount of dying people per year utilizing the treatment because it’s only available in certain states.  The biggest issue in America is the lack of availability for this procedure.  For example, “Close to 20 percent of Americans live in jurisdictions where adults can legally end their lives if they are terminally ill and meet eligibility requirements” (Span).  This leaves hundreds of thousands of Americans every year dying of terminally ill diseases plugged into machines for months or even years and have no other option but to wait until they pass organically.  This procedure needs to be made available to everyone in America that could be in need of it.

Assisted-suicide is also an ethical issue to doctors because of the Hippocratic oath.  Some believe that if a doctor were to aid in assisted-suicide of a patient that it would be breaking the doctor’s Hippocratic oath they swore to always help patients. Sure, it could be made out to seem like the doctor is intentionally ending a patients life in the procedure, but it is only for the benefit of the patient, and it is what the patient has asked the doctor to do to him. If the patient is of sound mind, and makes the decision to end their life, then it should not be put on the doctor for killing the patient its only what was asked of them and it is ultimately helping the patient in the long-run.

  Groups that oppose assisted-suicide also believe it is okay if the patient refuses treatment but its not okay if the doctor gives medication to the patient to end their life (Sulmasy).  This is essentially worse for the patient because they are going to die eventually but instead they have to sit in a bed suffering until it happens.  Furthermore, most doctor’s don’t prescribe enough pain medication to patients for fear of them abusing the drug and becoming addicted (Sulmasy).  Groups that oppose assisted-suicide are only stopping people from getting the relief that they may need.

Assisted-suicide has been criticized by the Catholic Church, disability-rights activists, and others who have moral objections to assisted-suicide ever since the treatment has been existed (Span).  However, when Americans are asked “When a person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his family request it?”  67.5 percent answered yes to the question in the past 15 years.  This means that about two-thirds of Americans approve of some means of assisted-suicide to help the terminally ill, yet the procedure only exists in five different states.  Certain political and religious activist groups have done their best to keep assisted-suicide illegal in the United States because it goes against their beliefs and values.  This may be true but not everyone has the same values in a country with over five hundred million people.  The activist groups need to realize that their beliefs shouldn’t be enforced on everyone because everyone has opinions on issues and people should be able to do with their body what they choose.  

Another large group that stands in the way of legalizing assisted-suicide is big brother himself.  The government has no right to allow these people to continue to suffer and to be refused treatment of assisted-suicide.  This is also an issue of individual rights and freedoms that the government is keeping from people.  If someone is suffering for years in a hospital bed hooked up to machines, then what does the government and activist groups think they are doing to tell this person they have to continue to suffer and await their death rather than be put out of their pain easily?.  People should mind their own business and just let people do with their lives what they choose.  The right to choice in America is a commonly referred to debate with many topics such as abortion and gay marriage.  Both abortion and gay marriage have been legalized in America because the support overweighed the opposition.  Assisted-suicide can become a law just as easily if the support for change can grow.

A common argument of groups that oppose assisted-suicide is that it is an easy process for people to request assisted-suicide and that it would be used for people that aren’t sick or dying.  That is a fair point to be brought up, however that is a hypothetical argument and assisted-suicide is a last resort option when there are no more treatments available and the patient is fatally ill where death is inevitable.  Furthermore, the states that allow assisted suicide mandate that the patient request the drug three times, the patient be eighteen years of age and the patient must be terminally ill with a diagnosis of less than six months to live (Engber).  If the doctor thinks the patient may have a psychological disorder they can refer the patient to an evaluation (Engber). On top of the rest of the procedure, “the doctor also must tell the patient about alternatives like hospice care, advise the patient to confer with one’s family or next of kin, and remind the patient that it's OK to change one’s mind at any time. By law, a second physician must review the case and sign off on the first doctor's diagnosis” (Engber).  The doctor goes through every measure possible to make sure this is what the patient wants to do and makes sure it is the patient’s decision only.  

There are two forms of assisted suicide that can be prescribed to patients that meet all of the requirements.  “Seconal costs about $125 for a lethal 10 gram dose, which comes in the form of 100 individual caplets that must be broken apart to produce about three tablespoons of powder. Nembutal comes in a more convenient liquid form. It costs more than $1,000 for a dose, though, and insurance almost never covers lethal drugs” (Engber).  They are both relatively inexpensive medical treatments that could most likely be covered with any standard medical insurance.  The seconal can be mixed into a food or drink of some sort and then it is ingested, which is when the patient will fall into a coma, and death usually comes within a half hour (Engber).  The actual procedure of administering the drug is pretty simple and there really isn’t a lot that can go wrong.  The patient is painlessly put to sleep and no longer has to suffer.

Legalizing assisted-suicide is important to me because I have had a family member that had been hospitalized and terminally ill for over five years.  My Uncle Mike was in his 40s when he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and needed surgery to remove the tumor.  Unfortunately, the surgery didn’t end up going well and he was later diagnosed with bacterial meningitis.  He sat in a nursing facility for five years and it was inevitable that he wasn’t going to live.  My family is religious and prior to my Uncle getting sick they were against legalizing assisted-suicide.  But after five years of my uncle lying in the hospital he had begun to bring the idea into light of physician-assisted suicide to put him to rest easily and my Christian family was completely supportive of whatever decision he made.  After seeing someone suffer that you love for that long it would definitely make you think of assisted-suicide as a treatment rather than a ‘sin’.  Unfortunately, my uncle passed before our family could find someone to administer the procedure closest to Pennsylvania.  If there had been any sort of assisted-suicide treatment available in our area may my uncle wouldn’t have had to suffer for as long as he did.  There are cases like this all the time where people are in need of ending their suffering and have no means of doing so.  There are religious and political groups that believe assisted-suicide is morally wrong because it is taking their own life, which is technically suicide in their eyes.  Yes, assisted-suicide is technically ending one’s life but there are sometimes circumstances where that is the better option than having someone suffer for months or even years.  

Another issue that continues to hold people back from accepting assisted suicide as a common practice is the word choice for the treatment itself.  People correlate the word suicide to someone killing one’s self and taking the cowards way out. This makes the treatment of assisted-suicide sound like a bad idea to people when its really just the stigma that the word ‘suicide’, carries itself.  People that oppose assisted-suicide prefer this word usage to remind people that it is in fact someone killing oneself.  However, this is a last resort option for people that are diagnosed to die within the year and there is actual data that word choice affects people’s opinion on assisted-suicide.  When the term ‘physician-assisted suicide’ is used the survey is split with 47% approving of the treatment and 49% disapproving of the treatment (Federman).  When the word suicide is used the country is split on whether the treatment should be legalized.  However, when a different wording is used like ‘aid-in-dying’ or ‘dying with dignity’ 70% of respondents agreed that it should be legalized in America (Federman).  So basically some people don’t agree that the treatment should be legalized because they don’t fully understand it and correlate the word suicide to ‘an easy way out’ and it hurts the progress of making the treatment fully legalized in America.  

There are many arguments that the opposing side of assisted-suicide use but many of them are ethical arguments based on their personal beliefs that people should not end their lives.  They believe that legalizing assisted-suicide would be a negative feedback loop that would open the door to worse things to come such as normalizing the idea of death (Golden).  This is a medical treatment that would only be used to help people dying that would in no way normalize death.  People that oppose assisted-suicide also say that it is cheaper than most medical procedures so people that don’t have money for proper health care would be steered toward assisted-suicide (Golden).  Just because assisted-suicide is a cheaper option doesn’t mean it is what’s necessary for the patient.  Assisted-suicide is not a procedure that the doctor recommends it’s something that the patient requests himself.  One argument that is a pretty good point to bring up is that doctor’s diagnoses are not always correct and some people may live past the diagnosed time given by the doctor (Golden).  This is true however no doctor could ever give a completely accurate diagnosis.  The people requesting assisted-suicide are truly on the verge of death and have intolerable pain.  This is not a treatment that people would want to rush to get a prescription for.  The problem with most of the counter-arguments provided by the other side is that they either don’t understand the system required to get approved for assisted-suicide or they have certain beliefs that they want everyone else to conform too.  There are fair points made by the opposing side but they don’t realize that there are more benefits to legalizing the treatment than there are consequences.  This would make it much easier for people who are suffering and easier on their families to longer watch them suffer.

Most of the discussion on assisted suicide is directed toward whether it is ethical from the patient’s perspective but at the same time the doctor is the one that has to write the description to give people the ability to kill themselves.  CBS this Morning did a special in which a doctor and patient came on to talk about their opinion on the procedure.  The patient was 29 years old and diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma and told she had 6 months to live (CBS).  The doctor actually mentioned the misuse of word choice in assisted suicide and how it affects people’s opinion on the topic.  The doctor also mentioned how most doctor’s can alleviate most pain that is brought upon by cancer but the emotional trauma and depression is what gets to the patients the worst.  Even doctors believe that this is a treatment that can help people that have nowhere else to go.  If someone that has dedicated their entire life to the medical field thinks assisted-suicide is a helpful treatment, then clearly something needs to be done in legislation to legalize the treatment.  Assisted-suicide benefits patients because they don’t have to sit in their bed as their body breaks down and that’s when the emotional trauma sets in and the patients mentally break down. It is more about alleviating the mental pain then physical pain but sometimes the mental pain is what gets to people the most.

Assisted-suicide needs to be brought into action in the congress and a bill needs to be drawn up to legalize the treatment throughout the country.  This is a medical treatment that is available to only a few people in the country but is needed by so many.  Death is an inevitable part of life that scares a lot of people and that’s part of the problem that makes people wary of legalizing assisted-suicide.  Also if people agreed to change the usage of the word for assisted-suicide then they would be more supportive of the idea and it may pass through congress.  This is an issue that needs to be handled fairly quickly because of the demand for the treatment due to the amount of deaths by cancer and heart disease every year.  If people understood how assisted-suicide helps alleviate emotional distress and is a last resort treatment than everyone would understand the benefits of the treatment and the thousands of people every year that assisted-suicide would help could finally rest easy in their final hours.
