To Live or not To Live: The Choice Is Yours.

Essay by NeelumCollege, UndergraduateA+, August 2003

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What do we mean when we say 'life'? Do we mean the continued functioning of the body? Of the brain? Or do we mean the continued experience of the human being?" (Pridonoff, pg. 73). Many doctors are now performing what is known as physician-assisted suicide, which is when a doctor sets up a machine, but the patient actually kills him or herself. Whereas, euthanasia is the act of the doctor killing the patient. There are two sides to this issue. One side is whether or not a person should be allowed to end his or her own life. The other side of the question is, "who's decision is it to end a life?" There is a difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. The choice to have a doctor help end a terminally ill patient's life is the patients decision to make.

Many people are opposed to physician-assisted suicide because of their religious beliefs.

Traditional Christian beliefs are that assisted suicide violates one's natural desire to live, suicide harms other people, and life is a gift from God and God should be the only one able to take a life from a human being (Robinson, pg.2). However, there are also religious organizations that believe in physician assisted suicide. One of them is the Mainline and Liberal Christian denominations. They are pro- choice for this form of assisted suicide (Robinson, pg.7). Many of these beliefs urge followers to choose life over death, unless life is sustained by a machine (Edelheit, pg.45). Physician-assisted suicide for patients who are in a great amount of pain should not be illegal. The patients live everyday wishing they could die to end their pain. Sigmund Freud was in extraordinary pain from cancer. He whispered to his physician, "This makes no more sense." His doctor then injected him...