Word: die
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...upcoming term it will decide whether Americans who are terminally ill have a right to get help from their doctors and family members to end their lives. This announcement came just a week after Robert Dent, a 66 year-old cancer sufferer, became the first person to die under Australia's Northern Territory's controversial legislation--the first of its kind anywhere in the world--legalizing voluntary euthanasia. In the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, many euthanasia advocates have cheered the Northern Territory law. They hope for similar laws in the United States in light of the Supreme Court...
...willing to accommodate them too? And what about a paraplegic who requests death? Are we going to refuse him because we judge that his life is more meaningful than that of a cancer sufferer and that his pain is less acute? Or are we going to let them all die? There simply is no "dignity" in such death, and society as a whole cannot appear to be condoning such practices by legalizing them...
...patient, we must keep in mind that certain individual freedoms, such as the right to sell oneself into slavery, must be restricted because of their broader societal implications. And the societal implications of physician-assisted suicide are grave, as is the potential for misuse. The right to die could become a duty to die, with patients feeling pressurized into requesting euthanasia. Patients might choose to die not because they cannot bear physical pain anymore, or because they don't want to live, but because they decide that the financial and emotional burden that they are placing on their families...
...pain and suffering is the bench-mark for which terminally ill patients can request the "right to die," what are we to do about the palliative care inequities that exist across the world, including in the United States? Once voluntary euthanasia is legalized and widely practiced, patients may request this procedure because they haven't been provided proper pain treatment If treated properly with the necessary pain killers, these patients would not seek to end their lives. Of course we could argue that voluntary euthanasia should be practiced only in those cases where the best palliative care has already been...
...right to die" and "death with dignity" brigade do not occupy the moral high ground on this issue. And they are certainly not the only ones with compassion for those who suffer. All of us feel the pain and anguish of those we love who are terminally ill; like many others, I have personally experienced the anguish of a loved one experiencing a slow, painful death. But my response to such suffering differs fundamentally from those who would legalize euthanasia. As a society we should show compassion for those who suffer, not by saying "we can help...