physician-assisted suicide should be legal and available to those who choose to use it
I am investigating the claim that physician-assisted suicide should be legal and available to those who choose to use it. The counter-argument for this claim propagates for improved access to quality hospice and palliative care to discourage people from selecting the physician-assisted death option. This claim is made by those persons in the medical field who feel that this practice curtails their moral and legal integrity to be healers. According to (Baumann and Schaber, 2017) they state that “The assumption that patients should have a right to die would impose on doctors a duty to kill, thus restricting the autonomy of the doctor.” The other parties that are interested in this claim are the religious community who argue against the morality of such a decision. And the government, which tries to ensure there is some form of checks and controls.
Information about this practice is varied, in the United States, the federal law and constitutionality challenges have necessitated that states make their own choices when it comes to physician-assisted dying. According to the World Population Review, assisted suicide states 2020 in the U.S are; California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Data released by Oregon Health department 2015 divulge 1 in every 50 patients talk to their doctor about this option with 1 out of 6 involving their families in the decision. This claim is in tandem with the findings and personal observation because I established in states where the practice is carried out in an open space, it is easy to control the outcomes (Wieir, 1997).
The rhetoric used in respect to this claim is the physicians’ integrity the oath of office that doctors take to preserve lives is in direct conflict with the physician-assisted suicide practice. The other rhetoric that has been pushed is the potential risk of abuse. Without checks in place, this practice has shown the potential to be misused, especially when the suffering is too expensive to treat (Clark, 2017).
A report of physicians’ beliefs about physician-assisted suicide (Hetzler, Nie, Zhou, and Dugdale, 2019) shows that 60% percent of physicians in the United States believe the practice should be legalized. With a large percentage arguing that there should be no criminal penalties for performing the act. This study indicated that those physicians who were not comfortable to carry out physician-assisted suicide even after it has been legalized attribute it to lack of training or expertise in the practice. This study also confirmed that morals and ethics are essential values for physicians with a majority citing the Hippocratic Oath “do no harm” to explain why they would not carry out physician-assisted suicide.
The best way to assess the probabilities of physician-assisted suicides is to ensure that the physicians who carry out the act are adequately trained psychiatrists. They can sufficiently screen the patients seeking the service for depression. Also, prognosis should be used as a safeguard to determine whether the patient chances of surviving are low. Prognosis is limited with the caveat that a patient has to accept treatment for a proper analysis to be done.
Patients should be given the right to have control over their life circumstances, and that involved seeking access to proper health care or choosing physician-assisted dying. By making this process legal, it will make it easy to train the physicians on the exercise and also allow for proper legislation of laws for safeguarding.