What Is the Great Benefit of Legalizing Euthanasia or Physican-Assisted Suicide?

Article Abstract:

Legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS) creates advantages and disadvantages, but there is no evidence that a majority of the 2.3 mil Americans who die each year would benefit from legalizing PAS. Certainly, many advocates for PAS would benefit, but they do not represent the entire population. Advantages include patient autonomy and relief from suffering. Disadvantages include possible coercion and loss of trust in physician-patient relationship. More social resources should be spent on meeting the medical and spiritual needs of the terminally ill.

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A Right of Self-Termination?

Article Abstract:

Debates regarding the right to die and physician-assisted suicide should consider more than patient's self-interest. A patient's good may be a function of value ascribed to the patient by those who care about the patient. Dying with dignity may not be as important as living with dignity in the face of death, to uphold a value larger than the self. The right to die may be morally justifiable when dignity is impossible, but society's rush to validate physician-assisted suicide should slow down.

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Similar abstracts:

• Abstracts: A Critique of Three Objections to Physician-Assisted Suicide. Physician-Assisted Suicide: Two Moral Arguments
• Abstracts: Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doctrine of Double Effect, and the Ground of Value. Sex, Suicide, and Doctors

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