Assisted Suicide

Assisted Suicide for it or against it

The topic I chose to do research on is assisted suicide, from reading the first assignment which was the article on Wolf's father death which made me think about the issues around life and death a little deeper. Since I lost a loved one to Alzheimer's a week prior to this class starting the topic on assisted suicide so it was real personal to me. Watching my uncle past away slowly was difficult for me and my family he went from being a vibrant man full of life to absolutely nothing. He drove buses for muni in San Francisco California for twenty years while raising six kids, four of them weren't even his and three grandchildren as well as numerous nieces and nephews before he became incapable of using the bathroom on his own or being able to take care of himself. He lost his identity and who he was as a man as well as any memory of his family. My uncle lost an enormous amount of weight and would be in a vegetative mute state and at other times he would come out of that state speaking but not really making any sense and then he would become explosively combative so we would have to restrain him so he wouldn't hurt himself or anyone else. Before he passed away he was in a constant vegetative state and stopped eating food or having

anything to drink then one day he just stopped breathing and passed away on the toilet in my cousin's arms. I wouldn't wish his last years of life on anyone.

How is life valued? Is it valued by our accomplishments, by who we love or how much we are loved, or if we are self-sufficient in our lives? When I think about living in constant pain or having to rely on someone else to clean and feed me terrifies me. It made me rethink what's important in my life and how I would feel if I was incapacitated or unable to take care of my day to day needs from an illness or crash. Would I want to end my life or just make it as comfortable as possible until I passed? When I first started to research this topic I was one hundred percent for the right to assisted suicide now I feel a little different. Should we as people have the right to take our lives when faced with a terminal illness or a fatal crash? In this paper I will discuss both sides the right to live verse the right to die and which side I agree with and why.

Whether you are homeless, with disabilities, or without medical coverage if you are in agony and pain you should have a right to adequate medical care and efficient pain meds to be able to maintain while having good beside care. Research shows that when a knowledgeable physician asked terminally ill patients that had requested assisted suicide if they had the option to be given

treatment to make them comfortable as they past would they still want to have their life ended by a physician, they had different responses once the doctor addressed there questions about death, and they had their family and friends around or at least someone to go through the process with them all the way to the end ( Foley, Hendin,2002, pg.17). Most lower class families and people with disabilities or mental health issues are the main people that when faced with terminal illnesses and fatal crashes want assisted suicide or euthanasia because they don't have the financial means to afford adequate pain medication or the emotional support from family and friends. We as people need to make sure that people without family and friends involved that someone is at least checking on them and going through the process of passing away with them and they are comfortably medicated so that they can pass in peace as comfortable as possible.

In the spring of 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court denied the right to assisted suicide which put the problem back on legislation and to the courts of public opinion (Foley, Hendin,

2002, pg.16). The U.S. Supreme Court stated in 1997 that assisted suicide was not necessary for the people in the New York and the Washington State cases that it was assisting because they have modern medical ways to give relief from their suffering when needed as they pass away from

their terminal illnesses (Foley, Hendin, 2002, pg. 17). The professor of law at a New York University argued that there should be a constitutional right to die. He argued that the doctor and competent patient should be able to decide and agree when the dying patient should pass. He suggests that the Court's opinion on abortion and terminating medical care support his own belief that physicians and competent patients should be able to agree about the timing of the patient's death (Palmer, 2000, pg.39). He and five other philosophers filled a brief to the United States Supreme Court arguing that voluntary suicide wouldn't undermine the secular notions of the sacredness of human life. The Supreme court rejected the philosophers argument but Professor Dworkin stated in a New York Review of Books essay that majority of the justices in the Supreme Court had not rejected his basic idea that the liberty the courts gave for the right to abort means that there is something called a constitutional right to die (Palmer, 2000, pg.40).

In 1990 Justice O'Conner, Rehnquist, and Scalia agreed that terminating the care of an incompetent patient in Missouri that for seven years prior came in from a serious car accident and laid in a comatose state was found constitutional. The parents of that patient lost the initial battle in the Supreme Court but won the fight through a Missouri trail judge that

granted them permission to remove her food and nutrients that were sustaining her life in a constant vegetative state (Palmer, 2000, pg. 41-42). The lawyer in this case argued that the incompetent patient had a right to die and they based it on the arguments from the prior decisions on abortions in court and cases on terminating care. The court felt that as her parent and legal guardian they had some rights could make most, but not all of her decisions. She had no living will so she was considered a silent patient. The Missouri political system decided that before terminating care or stopping hydration and food a court must find by clear convincing evidence that termination was in accordance with the silent patients wish (Palmer, 2000, pg. 43). One group of members recommended the legalization of assisted suicide. Five commissioners opposed the attempt to avoid resolving the question of the legalization of assisted suicide and six abstained the idea. All the commissioners agreed that the legislation should be doing something to increase patient and doctor access to meds to control the pain and other distressing symptoms of illness. They suggested that all people have a right to modern methods for treatment and pain medication, which most doctors aren't trained