Me Before You: Physician Assisted Suicide

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Recommended: Objections to physician assisted suicide

Katie Cundiff
Mr. Bosse
Honors English 10
24 January 2017
TITLE
In a world that embraces self empowerment, one may stumble upon a movie scripted to romanticize physician assisted suicide. Also known as euthanasia, it can be defined as, “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable disease,” which is illegal in most countries (Merriam Webster Dictionary). In the recently released movie, Me Before You, love is brewing amidst the caretaker, Lou, and the paralyzed Will Trainor. Throughout the movie, Lou desperately attempts to shake the decision Will has made to be euthanized at the end of six months. With no such luck in the end, Lou travels to Switzerland to support Will’s choice of assisted suicide. But what would have …show more content…

There is a whole new approach to those who have chosen the path of death, where in 80-90% of cases patients change their minds. Palliative care is an approach to euthanasia that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with a life-threatening illness through the prevention and relief of suffering, by means of early identification and treatment of pain and other problems, physical or emotional. However, in Belgium, this technique is disregarded as Belgium lawmakers vote for the “right to die” to be passed down to children. Through this bill, many questions are arising of whether children have the capacity to understand and make this final decision of their life. Sonja Develter, a palliative nurse specializing in end-of-life care for children, believes that “giving children a choice would mean they made decisions based on what they thought their families wanted to hear, and that it would be a terrible strain for children who may already feel they are a burden to their caregivers” (Smith-Spark and Magnay). Take Izabela Sacewicz for example. She is a young 18 year old girl with Huntington’s Disease, a neurological disease that reduces the life expectancy of children, but in adults, it results in uncontrolled movement, loss of thinking ability and death of brain cells. One day, her mother explains the process of euthanasia to her, asking if it is good or not good. Maybe shocking to advocates of euthanization for terminally ill patients, she replied with not good. Being a mother who has experienced life with a terminally ill child, Iwona believes that “Belgium lawmakers should focus on providing better support for families caring for children with terminal illnesses, rather than extend the right to die to children as five years old who

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