Argument against assisted suicide in Canada

Argument against assisted suicide in Canada
Name
Course number
Instructor’s name
Date
Steven Fletcher a Canadian legislator indicates that there is growing preference for physicians to assist patients with life threatening diseases to die (Theresa n.p.). Aid in dying encompasses euthanasia and assisted suicide and it takes different forms such as withdrawing spoon feeding, withdrawing drug administration such as insulin, administering lethal drugs and withdrawing life support. These practices are aimed at halting the life prolonging measures and it is presumed that continuing care is futile. Assisted suicide in particular involves the physician providing information and medical means by which a patient contemplating suicide can commit suicide (Harned 13). People have different bizarre motivations such as a pathological fear of germs, retired aged persons without family and friends (Patients Rights Council n.p.). Such reasons are non-life threatening and are insufficient in sanctioning assisted suicide because there are alternative solutions that could be explored to address their fear for prolonged living. Life is sacred and any motivations for physician assisted suicide life are absolutely unwarranted.
Legalizing assisted suicide in Canada would result in rampant abuse particularly for the most vulnerable persons in the society. Many concur that legalization is necessitated by the need to relieve un-relievable pain and the subsequent discomfort during death. However, many disabled people often may instead use the law for motivations other than pain. For instance, it is reported that disabled persons seek assisted suicide to escape from the loss of dignity and loss of bodily functions control in Netherlands and Oregon in the US (Golden and Zoanni 18). Persons with disabilities require recognizing that dependency on personal assistance is not undignified and it is better than death. Research shows numerous cases where health practitioners compel healthy persons with disabilities to sign do not resuscitate orders and assent to instructions barring administration of treatment for life sustenance (Golden and Zoanni 18).
Legalizing the phenomenon is driven by profit driven motivations and not ones to promote patient’s quality of care. Legalizing assisted suicide is bound to encourage a tendency by profit making health care institutions to disapprove costly treatment decisions and hasten deaths. The same may be replicated in government under funded medical facilities in a bid to minimize the costs. Legalizing the law implies that patients are denied requisite life sustaining attention or that it is delayed to propel patients towards agreeing to assisted suicide (Theresa 19). The law would have more debilitating effects on people with disadvantaged access to health care such as the poor, colored persons, older adults, those with terminal illnesses and progressive chronic illnesses (Theresa 19). Assisted suicide is a personal choice and patients must not be led on to explore its possibility for lack of treatment coverage in healthcare plans (Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund 1).
Research indicates that depression and other mental conditions is the primary reason why patients request for patient assisted suicide. Depression is rampantly underdiagnosed and untreated in elderly patients and those with terminal illnesses. Requests for assisted suicide triggered by depressive states are predominantly higher in patients with conditions such as cancer and AIDS (Gill 29). This research implies that legalizing assisted suicide would only increase the chances of allowing mentally unstable persons to commit suicide (Harned 514).
Legalizing assisted suicide allows physicians to provide ...