Question

Eight states and Washington DC allow by statute physician assisted suicide. Careful criteria have been established in these states to prevent abuses and overreaching. The patient must self-administer the oral medication himself, and no state allows the physician to administer the medication to the patient directly.

Research this concept, and decide whether this is a reasonable practice. But stay away from the ethics or religious aspects of this. Stick with the statutes and statistics. Some ideas to consider: Is it being overused or abused (review the state statistics)? What is the "slippery slope" argument? How does this collide with capital punishment in this country? Should this be expanded or abolished? Of course fortify your answers with respectable references.

Answer 1

Death with dignity laws, also known as physician-assisted dying or aid-in-dying laws, stem from the basic idea that it is the terminally ill people, not government and its interference, politicians and their ideology, or religious leaders and their dogma, who should make their end-of-life decisions and determine how much pain and suffering they should endure.

Death with dignity statutes allow mentally competent adult state residents who have a terminal illness with a confirmed prognosis of having 6 or fewer months to live to voluntarily request and receive a prescription medication to hasten their inevitable, imminent death. By adding a voluntary option to the continuum of end-of-life care, these laws give patients dignity, control, and peace of mind during their final days with family and loved ones. The protections in the statutes ensure that patients remain the driving force in end-of-life care discussions.

The death with dignity process is robust: Two physicians must confirm the patient’s residency, diagnosis, prognosis, mental competence, and voluntariness of the request. Two waiting periods, the first between the oral requests, the second between receiving and filling the prescription, are required.

Eight states and Washington, D.C., have death with dignity statutes:

• California (End of Life Option Act; approved in 2015, in effect from 2016)
• Colorado (End of Life Options Act; 2016)
• District of Columbia (D.C. Death with Dignity Act; 2016/2017)
• Hawai‘i (Our Care, Our Choice Act; 2018/2019)
• Maine (Death with Dignity Act; 2019)
• New Jersey (Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act; 2019)
• Oregon (Death with Dignity Act; 1994/1997)
• Vermont (Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act; 2013)
• Washington (Death with Dignity Act; 2008)

A slippery slope argument, in logic, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is often viewed as a logical fallacy in which a party asserts that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect.

Some of those against capital punishment believe that human life is so valuable that even the worst murderers should not be deprived of the value of their lives. They believe that the value of the offender's life cannot be destroyed by the offender's bad conduct - even if they have killed someone.

Death penalty should be scrapped because it can lead to the execution of innocent people. The justice system is bound to make mistakes and so, the accused people should be given achance to appeal, and prove their innocence other than being murdered because of mistakes made by judges.