On January 28, 2018, Aurelia Brouwers committed assisted suicide. She had a history of mental health issues including borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic-stress syndrome. She lived in Holland where assisted suicide is legal with permission from the government. Before her death, she was a passionate advocate for more liberal laws in Holland regarding euthanasia and assisted-suicide.
Physician-assisted suicide is legal in many countries around the world. This practice involves a physician providing and administering a lethal prescription to a patient who wishes to end their life. Some physicians find the effects of this practice to be taxing on their mental health. Others say it liberates them because they feel like they are simply helping their patients experience a more peaceful death and control their own ending. Others, outside of the medical sphere, believe that physician assisted suicide goes against a doctor’s obligation to help their patient heal rather than cause more harm.
Assisted suicide is the practice of a person, often a medical patient with a terminal illness, to receive a lethal dose of medication that ends their life. The primary purpose of this is alleviate the suffering of a dying patient, and allow them to choose to “die with dignity” rather than undergo what could be months of unnecessary suffering for an illness with no chance of being cured or their pain alleviated. In the podcast, we will be discussing the controversy surrounding assisted suicide, its justifications and benefits, and many of the objections to it as well as the flaws in some of those objections. For example, one primary focus will likely be the weighing between the necessity of autonomy and a patient wishing not to suffer versus objections such as the immorality of taking one’s life and barriers such as the Hippocratic Oath and how it interacts with the legality and morality of assisted suicide.
Another important aspect that will be discussed will be the legality of the issue, and the concerns not only with the moral aspects but how it would be applied to law and potential issues that may arise. As an aspect to that, we will also look at other countries and its effects in those countries as an intersection both of how true some of the moral and pragmatic objections may be, as well as seeing how other countries’ legal systems deal with the potential problems. The ability to see the effects in other problems will also be an important aspect in the conversation regarding issues such as how common assisted suicide would be if implemented, as it’s often far less common than would be expected, as typically it’s seen as a “last resort” option that takes much deliberation and discussion with the patient’s family. Because of this, it becomes a very important personal decision, which also raises the question of whether or not the government should have the right to object to what many would see as a personal matter.