VOLUNTARY ASSISTANCE IN DYING

VOLUNTARY ASSISTANCE IN DYING

Author’s argument

Peter Singer claims that we should put to an end the sufferings by patients ‘having a high probability to die and are willing to die peacefully. As such, the author highlights that governments in Wales and The Victorian are weighing upon introducing laws and legislations to enable medical practitioners to provide voluntary assistance in dying (Singer, 2017). So, the author’s premises on his conclusion are based on the fact that we live in a pluralistic society; thus, each individual has distinct perspectives.

Sub arguments

The author argues that the patient should be in a position to make a careful and reasonable request to die, thus seeks to die from a doctor. In such a case, the author states providing assistance to such a patient is the easiest way of ending suffering since the individual is not willing to undergo the last days or months of the dying process (Singer, 2017). Hence, if the doctor is willing to assist in dying, it should not be depicted as a criminal offense since it was the patient’s request. However, the author contemplates that he received varying responses depicting that it was wrong to take a contemplate on taking an individual’s life.

Besides, the author argues on the contentious issue to provide voluntary assistance to individuals who wish to die. So, the author shows that for the past 40 years, laws have been enacted to allow doctors to offer voluntary assistance to die towards people who are terminally ill. The authors state that it is now a legal practice to offer voluntary assistance in states such as Oregon, California, Washington, Colorado, and Vermont. Besides, the practice has been legalized in Europe in countries such as Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland (Singer, 2017).

Evaluation

The premise posed by the first sub-argument is true since developments in modern society accept that adults could ask for medical assistance to die if they have an incurable disease. Also, the premise of the second argument is true. For the past 40 years, laws have been enacted in some nations like the US to provide voluntary assistance in dying (Better Health Channel, 2019).

Counterargument 1

Permitting health practitioners to engage in assisted suicide would create more harm than good in the future. Doctors have fundamentally depicted the role of a healer, thus providing assisted dying leads to serious societal risks. The involvement of doctors in euthanasia heightens the practice of unethical practices in the healthcare sector (ProCon.org, 2018). In the long run, doctors would be depicted as having the responsibility of ending life contrary to their obligation to save lives. Besides, legalizing voluntary assistance in dying would lead to the killing of persons unwilling to die, thus reducing the protection to live offered to people.

Counterargument 2

Despite nations enacting laws to provide voluntary assistance to dying, patients must meet set requirements by decree. For instance, the patients must have an advanced disease for the last six months, which would likely cause their death (Sulmasy et al., 2016). Also, the patients must possess the capability to communicate their decisions to be provided with voluntary assistance to die through a formal request. In addition, the patients must be aged 18 years or over and must be a permanent resident of the host country (Better Health Channel, 2019). Therefore, the process is not easy and is subject to serious scrutiny to ascertain that the patients meet the set requirements.

Evaluation of the author’s arguments

The author’s argument contains some questionable premises. For example, the author stipulates that people should not think it is wrong to help a patient die if they have valid reasons while making the request (Singer, 2017). From a societal perspective, it is wrong to facilitate someone to die since it is termed as facilitated suicide. As such, the society would become vulnerable to willful deaths which would have been prevented by the medics. It is wrong to conspire with a patient to taking unnecessary prescriptions aimed at achieving a peaceful death.

The author’s arguments do not contain invalid inferences since he talks from a personal perspective. The author has been in the medical field for the last 40 years, thus has enough experience to outline developments made in assisting a patient’s death (Singer, 2017). Singer has considered both perspectives of the practice being right and wrong. However, the author stands for the practice being right and opposes religious leaders who perceive assisted death as facilitating suicide. Besides, Singer provides the list of countries having enacted laws facilitating voluntary assistance to dying, such as some states in the US.

Furthermore, the author has answered the objections well by stating that the vulnerable and poor people would be pushed into terminating their lives. Singer provides statistics from Oregon, which shows that most of the individuals using the laws to voluntary end life were whites at 96% (Singer, 2017). Also, the well-educated with 50% having university degrees agreed that the laws were on point, thus downplaying arguments that the vulnerable in the society would be the most affected. As such, the author shows that individuals purchasing drugs under the prescription under the act on lethal drugs use them to end their lives.

The author has not overlooked some of the serious objections. As such, the author has clearly outlined objections to legalizing assistance in dying based on perspectives developed by our religious beliefs. The author relates the objection as similar to the contentious issue of same-sex marriage by outlining that religious beliefs are always free to avoiding the topic (Singer, 2017). In fact, Singer has gone an extra step to depict that we are a pluralistic society; thus, every individual is entitled to a distinct point of view.

Conclusion

Therefore, the evaluation’s verdict postulates that despite the counterarguments, patients in dire health conditions should be permitted to willingly end their lives as stipulated by law. The author has competently handled the issue by providing real-time evidence on developments made in the quest to providing voluntary assistance in dying.

References

Better Health Channel. (2019). Voluntary assisted dying. Retrieved 3 April 2020, from https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/servicesandsupport/voluntary-assisted-dying

ProCon.org. (2018). Top 10 Pro & Con Arguments – Euthanasia – ProCon.org. Retrieved 3 April 2020, from https://euthanasia.procon.org/top-10-pro-con-arguments/

Singer, P. (2017). We should end the suffering of patients who know they are dying and want to do so peacefully | Peter Singer. Retrieved 3 April 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/18/we-should-end-the-suffering-of-patients-who-know-they-are-dying-and-want-to-do-so-peacefully

Sulmasy, D. P., Travaline, J. M., Mitchell, L. A., & Ely, E. W. (2016). Non-faith-based arguments against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. The Linacre Quarterly, 83(3), 246-257. Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00243639.2016.1201375