Doctor-Assisted Suicide In Canada

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In a recent survey, 57% of Canadians said that they have watched someone close to them suffer a terrible death, and 85% of those surveyed supported doctor-assisted suicide. In Canada, doctor-assisted suicide is illegal, and the punishment for actively helping a dying patient kill him or herself costs 14 years in prison. However, every citizen is entitled to his or her own rights, and these rights allow every person their own right to decide how they want to live their lives. It is not legalizing suicide itself, but doctor-assisted suicide for those with terminal illnesses and want to be released from their sufferings. Doctor-assisted suicide should be legalized to any patient who requests death for numerous reasons. The initial matter is…show more content…
However, terminally ill patients who choose death with dignity instead of a prolonged death is not granted the available treatments because the law states it is illegal for a doctor to assisted suicide. Many people argue that doctor-assisted suicide should not be legalized because the act devalues human life. When someone faces death, in one of the darkest and most desperate moments of their lives, how can “the endurance of suffering confers its own dignity” when “liberty and autonomy are also factors of human dignity.” If it is illegal for doctors to end their patients’ lives upon request and the law forces the doctors to stay inactive in order to preserve this so-called value of life and let patients die without what is left of their dignity, then the law has failed those people. Denying the terminally ill the right to end their lives is also the denial of their individual rights and freedom of choice. If the patient does not wish to be kept alive, then doctors and their families should respect his or her decision. Keeping the patient alive by wiring them to a machine may allow them to live, but they are not really living. In addition, Steven Hawking, an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research has “described keeping someone alive against [his or her] wishes as the ultimate indignity.” If the outcome is an inevitable death, then doctors should let them die with dignity if that is their wish. If people have the right to choose how they live, they should also have the right to choose how they die, that is why doctor-assisted suicide should be

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