The debate on assisted suicide - Research Paper Example

The debate on assisted suicide Even as medicine seeks to save these extremely sick people, debate continues to rage on whether these deteriorated and tortured lives in excruciating pain should be ended or not. While some people opposed assisted suicide outright, others feel that legislations to allow physicians to end the lives of patients suffering from terminal illnesses are in order. However, such patients’ or their guardians’ or parents’ consent must be obtained prior to terminating their lives.

This paper explores the two sides of the raging debates on assisted suicide. There are several reasons for which cross sections of the population support the ending of terminally ill patients’ lives. First, assisted suicide should be legalized since people should be accorded the right to choose whatever they want to do with their lives provided they do not interfere with or endanger others’ lives. That is, peoples’ right to choose freely should also cover the right to choose when to end own life.

People whose diseases or handicap cannot allow them to end their lives should have the right to be assisted to end their lives and such a right should be granted and respected. Second, assisted suicide should be legalized since, as human beings, we have the duty and responsibility to relieve or end the suffering of other human beings and respect their wishes and dignity. It should be noted that certain diseases and conditions may make people lose their earlier dignity and they would rather choose to die than live in such dignity.

In fact, certain current conditions are so excruciating that some people are no longer able to function with dignity as they used to do (Terman et al., 2007). It is thus not only cruel but also inhumane to deny such be the merciful end to their misery, pain, and indignity by terming their please illegal. Human compassion also dictates that we should comply with such pleas and cooperate with the patient’s wishes. Opposing Assisted Suicide On the other side of the debate are those opposed to the idea of assisted suicide.

Their first reason for opposing the legalization of assisted suicide is that people have the moral duty to preserve and protect the lives of others. Assisted suicide is hence a fundamental breach of our duty to respect human life. In other words, given that the society should be committed to protecting all forms of life, it would be an unfathomable sin to end a fellow human being’s life by commissioning its destruction. It is also man’s duty to oppose any laws that would support assisted suicide, more so for patients who are innocent people (Humphrey, 2002).

Third, those opposed to assisted suicide assert that there is no exact definition of the lives that should be ended. This situation would give room for the arbitrary ending of lives deemed worthless or undesirable. In fact, cases of inconvenienced relatives and friends persuading and coercing their ailing relatives to ask for assisted suicide would be a routine thing if assisted suicide were legalized. Worse still, patients may sign assisted suicide requests but change their minds later when their conditions may not allow them to make their change of mind known (Hayden, 1999).

In such a case, someone may end up being assisted to die against