Persuasive Essay On Assisted Suicide

942 Words2 Pages

“The difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide is who administers the lethal dose of medication. (Dyck 56)” Euthanasia is illegal in the United States, but assisted suicide is legal in five states of the United States—Washington, Oregon, Montana, Vermont, and New Mexico. Euthanasia is when the doctor administers the drug, and assisted suicide is when the patient administers it themselves, though the doctor is still giving their patient the prescription for the drugs, allowing them to attempt suicide. Assisted suicide should not be allowed because doctors have an oath to save their patients—not kill, and it is inhumane for someone to be allowed to attempt suicide. Assisted suicide goes all the way back to physicians in ancient Greece and Rome who requested suffering patients to receive poison, but there was only a minority who opposed this practice. Though the earliest American statute outlawing assisted suicide is between 1857 and 1865. “A New York commission led by Dudley Field drafts a criminal code that prohibits "aiding" a suicide and "furnish[ing] another person with any deadly weapon or poisonous drug, knowing that such person intends to …show more content…

The requirements are eighteen or older, a resident of Oregon, Washington, Vermont, New Mexico, or Montana, capable of making and communicating health care decisions for yourself, and diagnosed with a illness. If all of those are determined by a doctor, a patient must then start a step by step process, which potentially can be only twenty or less days. The patient must first make a oral request to their physician, then there must be a fifteen day waiting period, a second oral request to the same physician, then a written request, and then the doctor is allowed to give a prescription for the patient to pick up in forty-eight

Open Document