Physician Assisted Suicide Persuasive Speech

Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience on the right to choose your path with P.A.S.

Introduction I. Attention-getter: “On New Year’s Day 2013, after months of suffering from unbearable headaches, your family member learned that they had brain cancer. This family member was 29 years old, just married over a year ago, and was hoping to start to build a family. Every day the lives of this couple involved hospital stays, doctor consultations and medical research” (Brittany Maynard). A. “Nine days after the initial diagnoses, your family member have a partial craniotomy and a partial resection of their temporal lobe, both an effort to stop the growth of the tumor growing inside their head” (Brittany Maynard). 1.

Every individual has to make choices in life; life can be seen as a plethora of crossroads veering off into different directions with every which way. Choices that can create or destroy life; in the blink of an eye a life could end, but in the same moment a new life could be brought into existence. The choice of physician-assisted suicide provides control, familiarity, and closure to the terminally ill patients. The patient is able to choose where he or she will be, when the time is right, and the ability to be surrounded around loved-ones and gain closure by saying goodbye in a timely-manner.

This is your fifth time taking a visit to the hospital where your terminally ill grandfather lays. You walk through the main entrance and you get that uneasy feeling as you enter the hospital. Nervous as you hand the security your ID and they slip you your pass and dismiss you with have a good day. You take a deep breath when you enter the room. There he is lying there drained, exhausted.

Physician-assisted suicide is a controversial subject all around the world. Although it is legal in some countries and states, such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Oregon, Montana, Washington, and Vermont it is not yet legal in most (Finlay, 2011). People travel from all around the world to these locations to receive information. Physician-assisted suicide is when terminally ill and mentally capable patients perform the final act themselves after being provided with the required means and information. The elemental causes found for physician-assisted suicide include: terminal cancer, mental and behavioral disorders, diseases of the nervous system, disease of the circulatory system, and diseases of the musculoskeletal system

1. (problem – PAS): In today’s society, Physician Assisted Suicide is one of the most questionable and debatable issues. Many people feel that it is wrong for people to ask their doctor to help them end their life; while others feel it is their right to choose between the right to life and the right to death. “Suffering has always been a part of human existence.” (PAS) “Physicians have no similar duty to provide actions, such as assistance in suicide, simply because they have been requested by patients. In deciding how to respond to patients ' requests, physicians should use their judgment about the medical appropriateness of the request.” (Bernat, JL) Physician Assisted Suicide differs from withholding or discontinuing medical treatment, it consists of doctors providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication to aid in the use to end their life.

Physician-assisted suicide is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and other parts of the world today. Assisted death allows mentally proficient, terminally-ill adult patients to request access to life-ending medication from their physician. This type of assisted death is promoted by organizations such as the Death with Dignity National Center, who advocate for countrywide advances in end-of-life care and extended options for individuals near death. Although there are various arguments that state it is both immoral and unethical, physician-assisted suicide is a viable and honorable method to provide end-of-life options to the terminally-ill and to provide better support, relief, and comfort to dying patients. This topic

In today’s society, suicide, and more controversially, physician assisted suicide, is a hotly debated topic amongst both every day citizens and members of the medical community. The controversial nature of the subject opens up the conversation to scrutinizing the ethics involved. Who can draw the line between morality and immorality on such a delicate subject, between lessening the suffering of a loved one and murder? Is there a moral dissimilarity between letting someone die under your care and killing them? Assuming that PAS suicide is legal under certain circumstances, how stringent need be these circumstances? The patient must be terminally ill to qualify for voluntary physician-assisted suicide, but in the eyes of the non-terminal patients with no physical means to end their life, the ending of their pain through PAS may be worth their death; at what point is the medical staff disregarding a patient’s autonomy? Due to the variability of answers to these questions, the debate over physician-assisted suicide is far from over. However, real life occurrences happen every day outside the realm of debate and rhetoric, and decisions need to be made.

Physician assisted suicide or PAS is a controversial topic in the world today. But the important question is, should physician assisted suicides be allowed in cases such as: the patient’s suffering is far too great and there is no chance of them getting better? This is a highly debated issue, that has activist groups on both sides fighting for what they think is the right thing to do. Physician assisted suicides can stop the excruciating pain a patient is in, especially if there is nothing that can be done to stop the pain. Or it can be done for a patient that fully understands that there is nothing that can be done to save their life, so as not to put their loved ones into financial hardship. In this

Who dictates how you live your life? How does one define life and when that life should end? If you become terminally ill, would you like the choice to choose how your life ends? In the United States, assisted suicide, is a highly-debated issue. On one side, there are many in support of allowing a person the right to end their life with dignity at the time of their choosing. While others believe, it is a moral right to sustain life and leave a person’s exit from this world to a higher power. The two opposing viewpoints have both compassionate reasons and disadvantages; nevertheless, a person’s human rights as an individual are the most important aspect to uphold.

A pathologist from Michigan, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was one of the first to participate in PAS (Strate, Zalman & Hunter, 2005, p. 25). There are documented writings discussing the severity of his patients: “those who seek him out have deteriorated by slow, painful degrees and wish to exit from their infernos on Earth before they deteriorate cognitively and/or choke to death” (Zeldis’s, 2005 p. 130). Many of his patients explain how they feel their own body withdraw and turn on itself; and not even being able to eat or go to the bathroom (Friend, Mary and Louanne, 2011, p. 116). stress that dignity and integrity are very personal matters; it is probable that being dependent on others to perform basic activities of daily living threaten a patient’s dignity and thus determine when an explicit request for PAS is made. Perhaps to deny someone the ability to limit their suffering is cruel.

A. The problem here is that people are already burdened with an illness and on top of that, it is a long and painful process that they must endure.

The process of assisted suicide, or physician-assisted death, is a hotly debated topic that still remains at the forefront of many national discussions today. Assisted suicide can be described as the suicide of patient by a physician-prescribed dose of legal drugs. The reason that this topic is so widely debated is that it infringes on several moral and religious values that many people in the United States have. But, regardless of the way that people feel, a person’s right to live is guaranteed to them in the United States Constitution, and this should extend to the right to end their own life as well. The reasons that assisted suicide should be legalized in all states is because it can ease not only the suffering of the individual, but the financial burden on the family that is supporting him/her. Regardless of opposing claims, assisted suicide should be an option for all terminally ill patients.

I chose my speech topic on Physician Assisted Suicide (Euthanasia). The reason I asked each question was so that I could see what the audience already believed. I wanted to know whether they already agreed with me, or if I would have to persuade them to my side. The main reason I asked the 1st question on my survey was because there are many people in the country who think suicide is just flat-out suicide; that there are no ways to get around it.

In an article from The New York Times, it says that this last Friday, the California State Legislature approved a bill that will allow assisted suicide. Doctors are helping, or “assisting”, their patient in committing suicide so that person won't have to suffer with the illness that they would endure through until their eventual death. Many people are arguing that it's just not moral while supporters of assisted suicide say that it's the person that has been diagnosed with the illness that has the ultimate say. Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson says, “We are talking about giving people a choice...,” and that “They want to be able to transition out of this life with their dignity.”