The Right to Aided Suicide: A Divisive Debate - Essay Sample

Introduction

The right to aided suicide is a trivial issue that distresses. This issue goes back and forth on whether a patient dying has legal rights to die through lethal drug interventions. Some people are against it because of their moral and religious reasons. Others support it because of their respect and compassion for dying patients. Physicians, too, are divided on the same issue. Physicians differ on a thin line, which splits relief from killing and dying. According to Pies, Ronald, and Annette, it is tough to sort out a fairy tale from reality when we are talking lethal drug intervention since the practice itself involves prescribing a lethal drug to patients to cause their deaths. I disagree with patients taking lethal drugs prescribed by physicians since such practices are equivalent to committing suicide.

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While several people know that California, Washington State, and Oregon have, for sure, legalized assisted suicide, it is less known that nearly half of the states in America have either passed specific laws banning the act or defeated the bills legalizing the act. Assisted suicide involves the injection of lethal drugs, which usually strikes a lot of people when they first hear about it. Upon close inspection, deadly injection intervention to a patient can be termed as a slip-up. Legalizing lethal injections does not increase the self-determination and choice of a patient. I believe such an opportunity augments the real danger, which in most instances, negates the genuine control and choice remaining to a patient. According to Pies, Ronald and Annette, every individual has a right to die peacefully, including the right to use any means to take their own life either alone or with assistance.

Mentally persons are at liberty to take their own lives and never be prosecuted under the law, but nowhere is it recognized that one has a right to commit suicide through lethal interventions. Constitutionally, no right to commit suicide or use harmful physician intervention is guaranteed; hence, let's not confuse the right to withdraw of care and the right to the provision of a lethal intervention. Nowhere under the law is documented that one has a right to obtain a lethal drug injection as a means of terminating own life; hence, I believe lethal drug injection is committing suicide. Terminally ill persons who request for lethal interventions are clinically depressed. These patients are experiencing treatable suffering or pain, which can successfully be diagnosed and treated. It is acknowledged that our laws are not adequately instituted since they inadequately protect persons with mental illness from being administered with lethal drug prescriptions. Legally, it is impossible to single out, for instance, which cases of terminal ill patients were compelled to terminate their lives by either family members or other relevant stakeholders.

According to David R. Grube, it is right to honor a patient's requesting a death with dignity. For David R. Grube, patients who seek lethal interventions do so since they are undergoing anhedonia, loss of dignity, and cannot control over their impending deaths. David R. Grube further claims that terminally ill patients requesting for lethal interventions are prudently screened to eliminate the idea of impaired judgment and depression. He also claims that not all sorrow and anguish on patients can be treated with hospice care or palliative medicine. Hence, it is fair to understand why physicians have to embrace lethal interventions when hospice care or palliative medicine is not working anymore, and the patient is undergoing anhedonia, loss of dignity, and cannot control their impending deaths.

Lethal injection or intervention to cause death is a serious mistake ever to be legalized. I believe lethal injection augments the real danger, which negates genuine control and choice of a patient. I disagree with patients taking lethal drugs prescribed by physicians since such a practice is equivalent to committing suicide.

Works Cited

David R. Grube, MD. "Ten Facts About Medical Aid in Dying." MD Magazine, 28 Aug. 2018. https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/ten-facts-about-medical-aid-in-dying.

Pies, Ronald W., and Annette Hanson. "Twelve Myths About Physician Assisted Suicide and Medical Aid In Dying."