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EthanSingerFirstEssay 4 - 24 Mar 2021 - Main.EthanSinger
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| | | If state-assisted suicide is thought of merely as a right however, then this question could be extended to anyone. If a prisoner can request the right to state-assisted suicide, why shouldn’t anyone who is feeling suicidal have this right? | |
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< | The instinctual answer to this question lies in the notion that assisting in suicide is something that feels morally wrong compared to the alternative of trying to help someone not feel suicidal. In the United States, the laws interest in preventing state-assisted suicide goes beyond this reasoning that there may be better days ahead. | >
> | The instinctual answer to this question lies in the notion that assisting in suicide is something that feels morally wrong compared to the alternative of trying to help someone not feel suicidal. In the United States, the law's interest in preventing state-assisted suicide goes beyond this reasoning that there may be better days ahead. | | | When someone is suffering immensely from a terminal illness that will inevitably kill them within months, and there is no way to be conscious and without pain, the right to physician-assisted suicide is a right in just nine U.S. states and the District of Columbia. There are arguably no better days ahead in these scenarios, and while the patient and their family may beg the physician to end the suffering, in 41 states the patients must suffer until death in these scenarios. | | | One way to solve this problem is to eliminate the right to state-assisted suicide for convicts altogether. This would avoid the promotion of something that feels wrong (assistance in suicide), while also solving the problem of fairness as people who commit the most reprehensible acts would no longer have a right that others don’t. | |
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< | This could be done by denying any requests for the death penalty when the death penalty is a potential sentence for a defendant. However, this is unlikely to work as defendant’s that wish for state-assisted suicide will still be able to access the right. They would just have to be sneakier about it. By refusing a lawyer, showing no remorse, and confessing to horrible acts, a defendant can ensure they will have the right to state-assisted suicide without directly requesting it. | >
> | This could be done by denying any requests for the death penalty when the death penalty is a potential sentence for a defendant. However, this is unlikely to work as defendants that wish for state-assisted suicide will still be able to access the right. They would just have to be sneakier about it. By refusing a lawyer, showing no remorse, and confessing to horrible acts, a defendant can ensure they will have the right to state-assisted suicide without directly requesting it. | | | The best way to eliminate the right to state-assisted for convicts is to eliminate the possibility of it all together. This means eliminating the death penalty. The timing is ripe for this, as for the first time in 34 years of polling by Gallup, a majority of Americans prefer life imprisonment without parole as a punishment for murder to the death penalty. Not just a slight majority, but 60%. Proponents of the death penalty may see the death penalty as a just form of punishment for those who commit horrendous crimes, but with a painless lethal injection and 10% using the punishment as a right to state-assisted suicide, it may be time to reconsider whether the punishment is even a punishment at all. |
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