Right to Live
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"The Right To Live?"
Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) generally refers to a practice in which the physician provides a patient with a lethal dose of medication, upon the patient's request, which the patient intends to use to end his or her own life. PAS is very different from euthanasia which among many people has been a common mistake. Euthanasia is the lethal injection given to the patient by the doctor whereas PAS is when the doctor gives the patient the lethal injection and the patient injects themselves. Now, imagine someone you care about is terminally ill and is going to die from this illness, but no one knows when. This person is in constant, untreatable pain, what do you do? This brings up the question, should physician-assisted suicide be a legal or illegal option for terminally ill people? PAS should be illegal because terminally ill people and their caregivers are abusing their freedom to choose death over living.
Now in many situations, people are having a hard time understanding how we will know when someone should be allowed to make this decision. This came up in a court hearing as one of the federal judge questioned, "Where in the constitution do we find distinctions between the terminally ill with six months to live, the terminally ill with one
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year to live, paraplegics, the disabled, or any category of people who have their own reasons for not wanting to continue living?..