Physician Assisted Suicide

My thesis statement was this: Physician assisted suicide should be legal in all States because terminally ill patients have the right to die with dignity, and it should also be a matter of free will and not that of the law.

ANSWER

Legalization of Physician Assisted Suicide

Introduction

Physician assisted suicide entails taking action to end life of an individual who has a long term illness.

Legalizing physician assisted suicide means that some people who want to die as a result of long term illness will receive suicide intervention.

Thesis: Physician assisted suicide should be legal in all States because terminally ill patients have the right to die with dignity, and it should also be a matter of free will and not that of the law.

Body Paragraph 1

Topic Sentence: Terminally ill patients have the right to control their own deaths

Evidence: Terminally ill patients should have a legal option of assisted death that recognizes the right to human death. In Washington, death with dignity Act allows mentally competent individuals who have terminal illness with a long-established prognosis with six or less months to live to voluntarily request for physician assisted death (Simmons, 2018).

Body Paragraph 2

Topic Sentence: Physician assisted suicide relieves the families the burden of caring for the long term ill individuals.

Evidence: The terminal ill patients and family members encounter problems in covering the healthcare costs. Ideally, when a patient is terminally ill, the medical care expenses can rise (Smith, 2017). Therefore, the physician assisted suicide has the potential of saving both resources and time for the terminally ill patients due to costly medications, long hospitalization and aggressive treatments.

Body Paragraph 3

Topic Sentence: Physician assisted suicide alleviates patient suffering as an alternative to palliative care.

Evidence: Patient suffering from long term illness such as terminal cancer often experience a lot of pain (Erdek, 2015). Physician assisted suicide has been advocated as a potential way of relieving patients long term pain experienced in terminal illnesses.

Conclusion

Physician assisted suicide should be legal in all states and a matter of free will in order to allow dignity death, reduced burden on patients and families and relieve pain among the terminally ill patients.

References

Erdek, M. (2015). Pain medicine and palliative care as an alternative to euthanasia in end-of-life cancer care. The Linacre Quarterly, 82(2), 128-134.

Simmons, K. M. (2018). Suicide and death with dignity. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 5(2), 436.

Smith, W. M. (2017). The Ethical and Economic Concerns of Physician Assisted Suicide.