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