The Right to Die

One Should Have a Right to Die




One Should Have the Right to Die
Who should be able to say that if one has a terminal illness, that one cannot decide when and how to die? No one except for that terminal person themselves.   The issue of whether mentally competent, terminally ill adults have a constitutionally protected right to commit physician-assisted suicide is one of the most difficult, diverse, and heart wrenching controversies of today's time. The related issue of whether terminally ill loves ones ought to be allowed to commit assisted suicide is also a heart wrenching issue facing American society (Roleff, 1998). The former is a constitutional issue for the courts; the latter is a moral question for society as a whole (Roleff, 1998). The right to die should be a fundamental freedom or choice of each and every person. I believe that everyone has their own rights to life and the choices that they make about their right to live or die.
Suicide is defined as the intentional taking of one's own life. In “assisted suicide,” a person is still carrying out his own act, but he is indirectly helped by an “assistant.” When the assistant is motivated by compassion for the terminally ill who clearly and repeatedly has asked for help, the act can be ethical and moral, if not legal. If the assistant is motivated by greed, then the act may become immoral, unethical, as well as illegal (Roleff, 1998).   In assisted suicide, a physician would give the terminally ill person a potentially lethal supply of medication, along with information about what dose would be lethal and what dose would be medicinal. In that aspect the physician's intention could be to give them the choice to take their own life (Roleff, 1998). A dying person should have information and a choice.
Many terminally ill often have potentially lethal doses of medication at home that they already use to treat their symptoms. To withhold such medicines because of an abstract fear about suicide would... [continues]

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