Case Study On Death With Dignity

1452 Words3 Pages

Jarica Otten
Dr. Wright
PHIL-2050-002
1 December 2015
Death with Dignity
Case Study The Death with Dignity Act was passed in Oregon in 1994, and it is another option for dying with those who have terminal diseases. These people that want to die with dignity have to be seen by at least two doctors and have six or less months to live. While making the decision to use this act, the patient must be in a safe mental state to be making this decision. Currently, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and soon to be California are the only states to carry the Death with Dignity Act. (Death) Brittany Maynard is a twenty nine year old woman who was just recently diagnosed with brain cancer, and after her diagnosis, she found out she had only six short months …show more content…

Brittany Maynard was a twenty nine year old woman who married her husband just a year before she passed away. Before she passed, she was diagnosed with a terminal disease, brain cancer. Her doctors gave her six months to live and using treatment might shorten her already short amount of time that she had left to live. Maynard and her family uprooted from their home in San Francisco, California and moved to Portland, Oregon. In Oregon, she planned to get new physicians and after attending appointments, she could be prescribed a lethal pill that would end her life. She wanted to live her last six months happily, and she didn’t want to suffer and have her family watch her suffer. (Death) She wanted to be able to end her life on her own terms, and not when the cancer says that she had to. She received a lot of unkind criticism for her choice. Death with Dignity Act, or the use of assisted suicide is morally justifiable, especially in Brittany Maynard’s …show more content…

Euthanasia is defined in our ethics book as “good death”. (MacKinnon) The chapter in our ethics book actually contains quite a bit of information about assisted suicide and the Death with Dignity Act. According to the chapter, assisted suicide would be considered as physician assisted suicide because the patient’s doctor has to prescribe the patient a prescription in order for assisted suicide to take place. The physician is helping the suicide take place, but they aren’t actually administering it. Another thing that assisted suicide would be considered as is voluntary euthanasia, because the patient is making a valid decision and they are mentally stable enough to make the decision on their own. (MacKinnon) Nowadays, doctors have worked to come up with the most ethical way of helping those who are interested in assisted suicide, the lethal pill. Suicide today, not including assisted suicide, has been increasing in drastic numbers. They don’t get to say goodbye to their families. Everything is just left exactly how it ends. If patients are considering suicide anyways, someone telling them they can or cannot have an assisted suicide will not change their thoughts. It is better to die a good death surrounded with friends and family rather than a bad, and sufferable death. This is why Maynard chose the option that she did, she wanted to go when she was ready and with her

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