By: Tamra Bell

What is Assisted-Suicide?  Assisted-Suicide is a type of suicide where terminally ill patient receives help from a caregiver or physician to medically put them to rest

Facts About Assisted-Suicide  Involves one person providing the means and instructions to help another person commit suicide  Assisted suicide is prohibited in 47 states  Attempts to legalize assisted suicide with ballot measures have been defeated in three states  Illegal drugs from Mexico are taken to be used for the suicides

People Who Die Without Assisted-Suicide  40-70% of patients die in pain  Ones who die without assisted suicide suffer every second

Reasons Why Someone Would Want To Have Assisted-Suicide  Patients don’t want to be a burden on their family  Right to die  Pain and suffering

Where is Assisted-Suicide Legal?  Oregon  Washington  Montana  Netherlands  Belgium  Luxembourg

Assisted Suicide Statistics  Between 1994 and 2006, there were 75 legislative bills to legalize PAS in 21 states and all of them failed  The reasons patients gave when requesting PAS in Oregon: 86% reported a decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable 100% reported loss of autonomy 86% reported loss of dignity

Pros  People should be able to control their own lives  Fatally ill patients are allowed to end their lives by refusing medical treatments

Pros (cont.)  Legal or not, assisted suicides occur, and it would be better if they were brought into the open  Being able to say goodbye  Person still having their dignity

Cons  Taking a life is immoral  Physicians can be wrong when estimating the time of death of a patient, causing unnecessary deaths

Jack Kevorkian  Known as Dr. Death  Used lethal injections  Helped with assisted suicide  Assisted over 100 people with their death

What Is Used for Assisted Suicides?  Sodium Thiopental  Pancuronium Bromide  Potassium Chloride  Morphine

A True Story  An Oregon woman dying of breast cancer asked her physician to prescribe a drug that would allow her to end her life  She took the medication  She became the first person in the United States to commit suicide with the help of a doctor legally  This has come to be known as physician assisted suicide

Frequently Asked Questions  Is assisted suicide safe?  Should people be forced to stay alive?  Does people have the right to die?  Shouldn’t people be able to die with dignity?

My Grandpa  My grandpa had Alzheimer’s  He was forgetting who we was  He couldn’t feed or change himself  He took off all his finger nails  He forgot how to walk and busted his lip; he had to get 6 stitches  Being 14 or 15 and taking care of a 65 year old man was hard for me and my sister

 In 2009, my grandpa forgot how to chew his food; he died  We took it really hard but it was a big relief  But if we would of brought up assisted suicide to him, it would of helped us out  We wouldn’t of had to buy diapers for him or spend money for him to go to a nursing home so we could have vacation  But the main reason is, we could of said ‘Goodbye’ and he would of died with dignity

Misunderstanding  Matthew Donnelly loved life  But he wanted to die  Matthew found out he had skin cancer  He lost his nose, left hand, two fingers and part of his jaw  Doctors said he had a year left  He was in severe pain  He pleaded to be put out of his misery  So his brother walked to the hospital, and shot and killed his brother

Your Opinion  If you had an ill family member that you watched suffer, would you want them to get assisted suicide?

Conclusion  I think assisted suicide should be allowed because:  It lets people die with their dignity  People should have a right to say when enough is enough