Physician Assisted Suicide

A detailed Summary of 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


Carter is opposed to assisted suicide, and shows such an emoting by describing several problems that would occur with such a death being legal. 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. The author makes a very strong appeal towards two individual legal cases. The first of which, Compassion in Dying vs. State of Washington, was settled with the right to assisted suicide for the terminally ill on the due process clause of the 14th amendment. This happens to be the same location that the courts located abortion rights. The second of these cases was Quill vs. Vacco, this particular case found a different justification for assisted suicide. 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 demonstrates his points with

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Approximate Word count = 820
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics

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