Physician Assisted Suicide
Should Physician Assisted Suicide Be Legal? The debate of whether or not assisted suicide should be legal has several different views, and the most common are portrayed in the two following summaries. First, Ernest Van Den Haag, who is a psychoanalyst who's works are widely published on political and ethical interests, states that terminally ill patients should receive the assistance in the aiding of their death. Second, Stephen L. Carter, a professor of Law at Yale University, presents the problems that would arise if assisted suicide was a granted constitutional right. Does any individual have a right to end one's life on their own terms; following are the points at hand. Van Den Haag is supportive of assisted suicide, because he feels that any person is in control of their own life and should have the power to terminate such life when he/she feels fit. First, Van Den Haag points out that since the decline of the Christian faith, the power to control one's life has become more visible. Thus comes Van Den Haag's thought of ownership, he states that since we are now the owners of ourselves we hold the power to dispose of what we own as we feel fit. In turn we should also be able to control the duration of life. Secondly
This time the right was sheltered by another part of the 14th amendment, the equal protection clause. Thus decision came into play because, in New York terminally ill patients on life support are given the choice to remove to supportive apparatus even if in doing so would cause death. Carter's next point illustrates how moral situations should only be settled in a court room on a whim of last resort. , he brings the thought that no person should have to live against their own will. His third argument discuses how the decision would be made to end a persons life, if the patient was not coherent to make their own choice. He starts his article by describing how society is in a sense disgusted with the notion of suicide, but he states that rather than punish suicidal attempts we try and prevent them. This happens to be the same location that the courts located abortion rights. The positions on physician assisted suicide should now be more easily understood, so that the next time this position is held in a public form we should be able to understand in superior way. The author paints a picture with his words of a fit young male obsessed with a German philosopher, who decides to commit suicide, but before he can he is in a terrible accident leaving him paralyzed in a hospital. Van Den Haag states that if a patient has left instructions while they were still competent, then they must be followed. Vacco, this particular case found a different justification for assisted suicide. Van Den Haag's final point is, and he calls it the "slippery slope argument".
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Acceptance Essays
