Assisted Suicide

People are often asked in their lifetime, If you could choose the way you were to die, what would your choice be? Many people answer with a simple, Peacefully as I sleep. Well, what if you were given this choice? What if you had that chance of a lifetime to die in peace, and to escape your painful death that your disease bestows upon you. In this 21st century that choice is an option, with physician assisted suicide. In a video statement played to members of the Supreme Court Victoria a woman, diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease in 1991, asked lawmakers to change the law banning assisted suicide. She said "If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?" The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Rodriguez, she committed suicide in 1994. This is an example of the extreme measures terminally ill patients are forced to take to escape the painful reality that their life is going to end, and that by law they have no control over when it will end or how long they will have to suffer.

On October 27, 1997 Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. Since the legalization of this act, 292 people have requested and went through with the act of physician assisted suicide. The act has many requirements before the physician is even allowed to review the case. The patient must 18 years of age or older, a resident of Oregon, capable of making and communicating health care decisions for him/herself, and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will beyond a doubt lead to death within six months. A psycho analysis is required on all possible patients by two different psychologist to verify the mental conditions of the patient.

Since the enactment of this law, and the recent release of the Dr. Jack Kevorkian; the thought of assisted suicide has been under strong controversy and talk of the press. But why? Many people seem to turn a blind eye to the word suicide. The automatic feeling of suicide equals hell is a fright to them. But given the situation, and requirements, is Physician Assisted Suicide really a sin? The people that are up for this act are dying with an incurable disease. They sit each day in a hospital bed, rotting away, waiting for the end leering around the corner. When given the opportunity to die peacefully, painless, and to give their final goodbyes to their loved ones; they jump for the possibility. Many terminally ill people do not want the last memories of themselves to be those of a weak, dying decrepit. The assisted suicide and euthanasia movements provide for these situations. They allow people to control their life, and their