The Medical Field & Its Controversies: Abortion & Euthanasia - Essay Sample

Introduction

Every profession has guidelines and rules that are followed during the execution process. The medical field, in particular, has the most strict guidelines and instructions that govern trained personnel in the field. However, the profession has quite many controversies that have been debated over time and again. Such disputes include the abortion controversy. Euthanasia is another contradiction that has been regularly visited in the medical field and the limited capacity of doctors to address the patients with chronic pains out of opioids. These controversies are actions or practices in the medical field that appear to be useful, but at the same moment, wrong from a critical perspective. The medical law judges them as legal, but at some moment, the judicial Law exposes them as illegal. As a result, they have been branded as controversies because they bring debating that has never come to an end.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Abortion has been a long-time controversy in medicine. Even though most of the developed nations have legalized abortion by law, the side effects that have emerged as a result of the practice are worrying. For instance, the United States Government legalized abortion in the year 1973 following a court case of Roe v. Wade (Rovner & Julie 34). As a result, several abortion laws were formed to govern the circumstances under which abortion would be legal and illegal. Since that law amendment act, the birth-rates underwent a sharp decline in the United States. More people began to abuse the Law. Abortion became a norm in society.

The same trend has been observed in many other developed countries. In the recent past, even the undeveloped and developing nations have also adopted the system. A critical analysis reveals that close to 55 million abortions are conducted in the world every year, and only 55% go successful (Florence, Zhou, Luo, & Xu 903). In contrast, the rest 45% are conducted unprofessionally. Such outcomes have made abortion to be a top medical controversy. People are abusing abortion. Lives of innocent new-born babies and unborn have been lost out of abortion. The main objectives in the medical field are to treat, care and save lives. However, abortion has been playing a significant part in contributing to the number of lives lost every day around the globe (Florence et al., 920).

Abortion, in most cases, entails the termination of pregnancy. Most people in the world today conduct abortion without genuine reasons, as stipulated by the Law. That forms the basis of the controversy. The questions that most people ask which have made abortion a controversy include:

• While conducting a medically legalized abortion exercise, whose life should be spared between the child and the mother in the case one life must be lost?
• What is the difference between abortion and murder? This question comes with the fact that murder is judged as a crime in court because it involves the willingness to terminate life while most people who do abortions do it willingly.
• Why should a crime be legalized by top developed nations?
• Why should the medical field and the government allow abortion, yet it is known very well that some people will abuse the policy.

The above-listed points form part of the many rhetorical questions that continue to arise out of this medical Law, which allows the termination of innocent souls of the unborn. Some say abortion is a crime. Others say abortion is a crime only when it is done without legal authorization by a medical specialist(Rovner & Julie 28). Another section of people argues that abortion is a voluntary legal activity. As a result, it has been listed as a top controversy in the medical field that has been debated for so long.

Euthanasia is the willingness to take somebody's life out of the decision to save someone from a lot of pain and suffering that will finally result in death. It is performed by a medical specialist after an agreement that is made between three parties; the one suffering, the family member of the suffering one and the medical doctor. The life law distinctly outlines the fact that there is no human being that has the right to take his own life. In other terms, deciding to bring your own life is a crime. In this case, three parties sit and agree to take a life (Rovner & Julie 81).

The controversy that emerges is that, instead of saving a life or trying to treat somebody to the last minute, the medical profession allows life to be taken earlier to avoid suffering. Many people feel this is not the best decision to make (Timothy, Legg, & Holand 40). People judge euthanasia as a crime because one does not die out of the natural circumstances, but one pass away out of a decision to avoid suffering. The act has also been on the lead of medical controversies. Some of the questions that arise under arguments of this controversy include;

Why should the medical field allow one to decide to die earlier as a way of avoiding too much suffering? Instead, they should try their best to reduce the pain and chances of suffering.

Why is this act not rated as a crime?

If the medical field can conduct a silent killing activity within the hospital, then it means that a person with bad intentions towards a patient can make a deal to kill an ailing patient in the hospital silently. For instance, a company car hits a pedestrian, and the company driver is confirmed to have been on the wrong side. The pedestrian survives the accident but is admitted to the hospital under critical conditions. The company realizes that when the patient recovers, the court ruling will be harsh. The company decides to collaborate with the hospital doctor treating the patient so that he can inject the patient with an assassin drug and terminate his life to eliminating evidence and other challenges from the court after the patient recovers. Under this section, again, it becomes a controversy because it comes out that patients should not trust doctors. Doctors are painted as assassins in this case. The contradiction here is that under strict conditions, from an interested party, a doctor can kill a patient, and this is against the rules, regulations and the oath of office that a doctor should adhere to. People wonder if doctors are assassins or medical specialists because they can kill.

There has been an opioid overdose crisis in the United States, killing over 47,000 American citizens (Timothy et al., 58). The medical experts' in the 1990s assured the American people that the use of these drugs would effectively relieve them with pain, especially for those patients suffering from chronic disorders (Timothy et al., 67). The drugs were prescribed by healthcare units at very high rates to people. Most patients are suspected of having misused these drugs by over-consuming them. The main idea that leads to this overdose crisis is the fact that the drugs are addictive, and the addiction led to the misuse of these drugs. Some of the questions that people ask themselves about this controversy include;

Why dint the medical experts reveal to patients that the drugs were addictive and worn them about overdose and the side effects of the drugs?

How comes the doctors did not reveal that the drugs can lead to neonatal abstinence syndrome?

People feel that the failure of the medical field to provide a detailed report about the drugs before fully allowing them to be consumed by patients ranks among the top factors that have lead to an opioid overdose crisis (Florence et al., 37). The doctors have been struggling to help the patients suffering from this chronic condition that has been caused out of misuse of opioids. In this case, too, it comes out as a controversy because the medical field should reveal all the challenges that come out of a drug that they declare safe. They should have the capacity to deal with the secondary difficulties and side effects of taking the medication. Therefore from the medical field, it is estimated that there are over fifty controversial issues and topics that have been on the debate floor for a long time. Most of these controversies share one thing in common; life is lost out of each of them.

Works Cited

Florence CS, Zhou C, Luo F, Xu L. "the economic burden of prescription opioid overdose, abuse and dependence in the United States ." 2013: 901-906.

Rovner, Julie. "AMA Abortion Lawsuit Puts Doctors In The Thick Of Debate ." 1 July 2019.

Timothy J, Legg, Ph.D., Kimberly Holand. "Euthanasia ." Understanding the facts 29 May 2018.