Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Stressed and in pain, Johnny is suffering of prostate cancer. He doesn’t know who to turn to because it stresses his family out more than his suffer and the hospital bills are “sky high”. “You should just die!” his family says. He turns to his physician for help. He gave him the suggestion of turning to assisted suicide. He told his family about the idea. They were happy and it made him feel better because he had their support. Dying in peace is what he wanted and it worked out for the good. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) should be legal because it brings less stress to the person and their family members. Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia has been around for some years. The ancient Greeks and Romans advocated euthanasia (Emanuel). ‘Assisting’ suicide means aiding, abetting, counseling, or procuring that suicide or the attempt to commit suicide (Mitchels 19). Euthanasia is similar to physician assisted suicide. The difference between PAS and active euthanasia is the physician himself directly acts to cause death (Gloth). The two work together in an everyday basis. Legalization and the attempts of assisted suicide have the U.S. in this predicament today. In 2008, a Georgia man name, John Celmer was diagnosis with throat and mouth cancer and committed suicide which began the case of wanting to legalize PAS (Severson). This case is the reason the United States had started the investigation of PAS. “These thirty-four U.S. states have passed specific laws that make physician-assisted suicide illegal: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, new Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.” North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, and Wyoming have no direct mention