rom performing this kind of service if it is the patient's desire and the only thing that will ease that individual's suffering. Naturally, if there are pain medications that will help the patient or if there is some strong chance that the patient can be helped and made to get better by normal medical means this should be undertaken.
             For those that are terminally ill, however, this physician assisted suicide is often seen by those patients to be the best option. There are quite a few arguments that want to keep physician assisted suicide illegal because of the possibilities for misjudgment and misuse of this procedure. Others, though, believe that all individuals have a right to control what happens to their own body and that physicians all have a duty to relieve the pain and the suffering that their patients are undergoing. When a patient is competent society strongly recognizes that individual's right to choose what they want done or not done to their body. Self-determination is one of the rights that competent adults have and these individuals are able to indicate whether they want to have treatments such as life-support withdrawn or withheld should they become necessary.
             Suicide in itself used to be illegal throughout the country but that is no longer the case. However, Oregon is the only state that allows physicians to help an individual take his or her own life to ease pain and suffering. When patients seek this type of help assistance can be given to them very humanely and if they are left to themselves they often have a lot of uncertainty and confusion over what they might do. Many of them also hold religious convictions that are strongly affected by ideas of deliberately taking one's own life.
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