Death With Dignity Speech Outline

Terminally ill patients lose control over so many aspects of their lives, in many ways physician-assisted death gives them back some of the control they lost. Illness is not discriminatory. Therefore, people of all ages and backgrounds are diagnosed with things like cancer, kidney failure, and heart disease every day. Also, for anyone who is unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with any terminal illness, it can feel like their disease controls every aspect of their lives and they have no choice in the matter. Authors for the Journal of the American Society on Aging Lee Combs and Grube describe how persistent pain took control of a young woman named Brittany Maynard’s life, “Even after undergoing a sophisticated surgery and numerous cancer treatments,

Eva Thompson, a 57 year-old Camden, Maine resident with stage 4 colon cancer, who is in favor of physician assisted

American political leader Anna Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” There are some people that live their lives happily everyday while there are some that are living in bitterness. Life is a cycle that everyone experiences from childhood to adolescence to adulthood and finally ends with death. Some may believe that maybe if a human being is no longer content with life anymore, then he or she might as well no longer be alive. The issue of euthanasia has been one of the most discussed ethical situations among healthcare workers and patients.

I have known people that have died slowly and painfully and it is very hard to see loved ones live in pain and pass away in pain. I could not begin to imagine what they were experiencing and having to live with. The Death with Dignity Act would provide those people with an alternative choice to the awful circumstances their medical conditions have put them in. This would allow those certain people to be able to pass peacefully and on their own terms. That is why I have chosen to write about the Death with Dignity Act.

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.

The Death with Dignity Act (DWDA), which allows terminally-ill patients to request physician-assisted suicide, was first introduced in Oregon in 1997. The basic premise of the law is that terminally ill patients, with no outside help, should be able to choose the right to end their life. Since then a few more states have the DWDA or an similar law in their state; an ongoing debate is going on to make the act legal across the nation. The Death with Dignity act allows the individual’s request to die to be acknowledged by the state. Though various of groups and people have spoken against this act, Oregon, with close to two decades of experience with the law, has shown that it can work well even when faced with backlash from the public because

The Death with Dignity Act has two arguments: those who believe we have the right to choose how and when we die, and those who believe we do not possess that right; that we should not interfere with the natural order of life. Every year, people across America are diagnosed with a terminal illness. For some people there is time: time to hope for a cure, time to fight the disease, time to pray for a miracle. For others however, there is very little or no time. For these patients, their death is rapidly approaching and for the vast majority of them, it will be a slow and agonizing experience.

What is Hospice? What do we as people think of when we mention the word, Hospice? “Bereavement” in other words that is not always a true statement. I now been with Hospice going on three years; June 17 2016. I have taken care of most of the patients I have had since day one as yes’ there are long term patients not short term.

The dying patient no longer has quality of life, they have lost their independence, are lonely, are forced to endure inevitable pain, are publicly humiliated, are suffering immensely, and are forced to watch their loved ones grieve because of them. It is an innate Constitutional Right to choose how to die, since we all will die. There comes a point when the poking and prodding becomes too much, when the patient wants to just die in silence in the loving arms of their

I argue that the techniques that Lopez used throughout the article created a strong argument that could very likely change the minds of many people in the world that support such an unethical act. Katherine Jean Lopez starts this article with an excerpt from a letter that a girl dying of cancer writes to another girl with cancer that wants to end her life with physicians-assisted

The possible legalization of euthanasia can cause a great disturbance in how people view life and death and the simplicity of how they would treat it. "There are many fairly severely handicapped people for whom a simple, affectionate life is possible." (Foot, p. 94) As demonstrated, the decision of terminating a person 's life is a very fragile and difficult one, emotionally and mentally. Nevertheless, it’s a choice we can make if it is passive euthanasia being expressed.

The Right to Die has been taking effect in many states and is rapidly spreading around the world. Patients who have life threatening conditions usually choose to die quickly with the help of their physicians. Many people question this right because of its inhumane authority. Euthanasia or assisted suicide are done by physicians to end the lives of their patients only in Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, New Mexico and soon California that have the Right to Die so that patients don’t have to live with depression, cancer and immobility would rather die quick in peace.

Imagine being unable to walk, unable to speak, unable to move and unable to breathe. Imagine being in a state of complete paralysis where the only thing that keeps on functioning is your brain, and you live chained to a machine doctors call life support. Imagine being told that you have an incurable disease that will inevitably kill you. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.

There are real case incidents in which a 14 year old girl suffering from terminal cystic fibrosis is asking her country’s president for permission to end her life. She had self shot a video in which she says “I am tired of living this disease and she can authorize an injection through which I can sleep forever”. The girl's video has sparked a broader conversation about whether euthanasia should be legalized in the largely Catholic nation. According to me we should let euthanasia be legal as there is no significance in keeping them alive against their wish as we don’t know how much they are suffering. Another incident is where the woman moved to Oregon where euthanasia is legal to take advantage of Oregon’s death with Dignity Law.

“Death with dignity is a human right: to retain control until the very end and, if the quality of your life is too poor, to decide to end your suffering; the dignity comes from exercising the choice.” says Jason Barber, whose wife, Kathleen Barber, died in his arms. He had one question in mind when she died. What was he going to say if someone asked him how she died? Whether she went peacefully? He decided to tell people that his wife died in peace, without any pain or suffering.