Agree with physician assisted suicide? There are an array of reasons that physician assisted suicide should be legalized. People should have the right to choose whether and when they want to die. A patient should not be forced to continue living, when there is no hope for recovery and they are experiencing intense pain. This in turn would reduce pain of the patient and their family. Other lives would be saved and health care costs would be reduced if it was legalized. These and many other reasons support the idea that physician assisted suicide would be beneficial to our society as a whole.

Allowing physician assisted suicide would lessen the pain and enable some terminally ill patients fairer treatment. Horrible pain and suffering that some patients must endure prior to death could be done away with. Instead of a dragged out death that puts burdens on family members, families could say their goodbyes at a specified time. The right to die is a fundamental right that all people should have. Additionally, justice says that we should “treat like cases alike”. Some patients can refuse treatments which will hasten death; however, for some patients treatment refusal will not speed up death, so suicide is the only option. Also, the assistance of a physician with suicide would mean that there would be less messy and traumatizing suicides. Many people that are facing an agonizing death choose to commit suicide. Some do this through shooting themselves in the head or jumping off a building, and this can have significant negative impacts on those that the patient left behind. If physicians were enabled to participate in assisted suicides, then these traumatic suicides could be avoided. Physician assisted suicide is a beneficial option for terminally ill patients to have because it lets them reduce pain and maintain their dignity during death.

Furthermore, if physician assisted suicide were allowed other lives would be saved and health care costs would be lowered. If a patient chooses assisted suicide instead of a prolonged death, then medical staff would have more time to treat other patients. Understaffed hospitals have an increased rate of making mistakes and provide a lesser quality of care for patients. Additionally, millions of dollars are spent each year to keep patients alive who are terminally ill, who would prefer to be dead. This money could be better spent on patients who can be saved. Also, vital organs could be used to save the lives of other patients. It isn’t fair to the patients or the health care system to drag out a dying patients life when they would rather die. By legalizing physician assisted suicide, hospitals would be more efficient, costs would be lowered, and other patients would be saved.

Physician assisted suicide is beneficial to all of the parties involved. Patients can stop an agonizing death and die when they want to. Families are not forced under the burdens of a dying relative for months or years. The lives of other patients would be saved; medical costs and errors would be reduced. Physician assisted suicide is something that upon closer examination has many advantages.