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Assisted Suicide

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Assisted Suicide
PHI 200: Mind and Machine

Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician assisted suicide is the common term whereby a physician, at the request of a terminally ill patient, assists the patient in voluntarily ending their own life. Assistance can mean providing one with the means (drugs or equipment) to end their own lives, but may extend to other actions. There are currently three states in the US which allow physician assisted suicide as well as a handful of countries. Global public debate has been ongoing for decades, centering on legal, religious, and moral conceptions of suicide and a personal right to death. “In some religious contexts, while a suicide is considered to be an offense made out of unknowing, confusion, or despair, assisted suicides are ostensibly actions made in faith, with no expectation of incurred sin or such that would bar transcendence to an afterlife”. In certain religious denominations, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, suicides are considered a serious sin. So, many Catholics oppose the practice of assisted suicide. For years, doctors have been prohibited from assisting patients to end their own lives. There are many arguments for and against assisting terminally ill patients to remain in control of their own destiny. Should a terminally ill patient be able to commit suicide? Proponents of patients’ rights argue that patients have the right to die with dignity rather than have an illness reduce them to a shell of their former selves. Activists also argue: • The right to die should be a fundamental freedom of each person; • Tremendous pain and suffering can be diminished; • Health care costs can be reduced, which would save patient estates an lower insurance premiums; • Nurse and doctor time can be

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