ASSISTED-SUICIDE SHOULD BE ALLOWED
By: Tamra Bell
What is Assisted-Suicide?
Assisted-Suicide is a type of suicide where terminally ill patient receives help from a caregiver or physician to medically put them to rest
Facts About Assisted-Suicide
Involves one person providing the means and instructions to help another person commit suicide
Assisted suicide is prohibited in 47 states
Attempts to legalize assisted suicide with ballot measures have been defeated in three states
Illegal drugs from Mexico are taken to be used for the suicides
People Who Die Without Assisted-Suicide
40-70% of patients die in pain
Ones who die without assisted suicide suffer every second
Reasons Why Someone Would Want To Have Assisted-Suicide
Patients don’t want to be a burden on their family
Right to die
Pain and suffering
Where is Assisted-Suicide Legal?
Oregon
Washington
Montana
Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg
Assisted Suicide Statistics
Between 1994 and 2006, there were 75 legislative bills to legalize PAS in 21 states and all of them failed
The reasons patients gave when requesting PAS in Oregon:• 86% reported a decreasing ability to
participate in activities that made life enjoyable
• 100% reported loss of autonomy• 86% reported loss of dignity
Pros
People should be able to control their own lives
Fatally ill patients are allowed to end their lives by refusing medical treatments
Pros (cont.)
Legal or not, assisted suicides occur, and it would be better if they were brought into the open
Being able to say goodbye
Person still having their dignity
Cons
Taking a life is immoral
Physicians can be wrong when estimating the time of death of a patient, causing unnecessary deaths
Jack Kevorkian
Known as Dr. Death
Used lethal injections
Helped with assisted suicide
Assisted over 100 people with their death
What Is Used for Assisted Suicides?
Sodium Thiopental
Pancuronium Bromide
Potassium Chloride
Morphine
A True Story An Oregon woman dying of breast cancer
asked her physician to prescribe a drug that would allow her to end her life
She took the medication
She became the first person in the United States to commit suicide with the help of a doctor legally
This has come to be known as physician assisted suicide
Frequently Asked Questions
Is assisted suicide safe?
Should people be forced to stay alive?
Does people have the right to die?
Shouldn’t people be able to die with dignity?
My Grandpa My grandpa had Alzheimer’s
He was forgetting who we was
He couldn’t feed or change himself
He took off all his finger nails
He forgot how to walk and busted his lip; he had to get 6 stitches
Being 14 or 15 and taking care of a 65 year old man was hard for me and my sister
In 2009, my grandpa forgot how to chew his food; he died
We took it really hard but it was a big relief
But if we would of brought up assisted suicide to him, it would of helped us out
We wouldn’t of had to buy diapers for him or spend money for him to go to a nursing home so we could have vacation
But the main reason is, we could of said ‘Goodbye’ and he would of died with dignity
Misunderstanding
Matthew Donnelly loved life But he wanted to die Matthew found out he had skin cancer He lost his nose, left hand, two fingers and
part of his jaw Doctors said he had a year left He was in severe pain He pleaded to be put out of his misery So his brother walked to the hospital, and shot
and killed his brother
Your Opinion
If you had an ill family member that you watched suffer, would you want them to get assisted suicide?
Conclusion
I think assisted suicide should be allowed because:
It lets people die with their dignity
People should have a right to say when enough is enough