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Death With Dignity Act Analysis

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On November 1, 2014, just shy of her 30th birthday, a young woman named Brittany Maynard, utilized Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act to end her life. She had been diagnosed with an aggressive, terminal cancer just eleven months earlier. After having brain surgery in an attempt to stop the growth of the tumor, the tumor came back and doctors only gave her six months to live. With no cure her only option was radiation that could leave her scalp with first-degree burns and her hair singed off. Brittany and her family decided that radiation was not worth the physical and emotional pain it would cause. After considerable research she decided to relocate from California to Oregon one of five states where there is a Death with Dignity Act (Maynard).
While some people feel that physicians must do everything possible to keep their patients alive, I believe that the Death with Dignity Act should be a legal option for terminally ill patients. A terminal illness can cause the patient pain and loss of autonomy and dignity, the family of the patient can experience emotional suffering, and medical costs can become …show more content…

The Act allows terminally ill patients to seek life ending drugs following specific rules and regulations from a licensed Oregon physician. Since then four other states have legalized physician assisted death. Washington also has Death with Dignity laws that became legal in 2008. The most recent states to pass laws regarding physician assisted death are Vermont who legalized Death with Dignity laws in 2013 and California legalized it in 2015. Montana doesn’t have a law in place for physician assisted death but in 2009, “Montana’s Supreme Court ruled nothing in the state law prohibited a physician from honoring a terminally ill, mentally competent patient’s request by prescribing medication to hasten the patient’s death” (Death with

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