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Assisted Suicide Has Its Place With The Terminally Sick

Euthanasia should be legalized all over the United States.

Although assisted suicide may sound harsh, it could actually be the best option for that ill person.

When someone is terminally ill, they are no longer capable of taking care of themselves and are not the person they use to be.

How can we allow them to continue suffering?

According to brainandspinalcord.org, a persistent vegetative state “occurs when, after a coma, a patient loses cognition and can only perform certain, involuntary actions on his or her own.”

They cannot take care of themselves, eat, use the restroom, and worst of all will not be able to communicate.

How do we sit here and act like we’re heroes when we are making life miserable for those people?

They are trapped in their mind and bodies, left to view everything in the world but not interact with it.

It is not murder, but instead it’s setting them free.

In Terri Schiavo’s case, she suffered massive brain damage and was in a vegetative state due to hypoxic encephalopathy, a brain injury caused by oxygenation starvation to the brain.

Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband, sought out the services of attorney George Felos, a right-to-die litigator.

On Feb. 25, 2005, Judge George W. Greer, decided on the feeding tube removal date of  March 18, 2005.

On March 21 Terri was announced dead. Terri suffered a potassium deficiency that led to cardiac arrest, then shortly after her brain was deprived of oxygen for 14 minutes which led to massive brain damage.

Dr. Adrian Owen is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging at The Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, Canada.

His studies show that only 20% of the brain dead patients can sort of respond with their brain when he asks simple questions but they are still not capable of doing anything else.

In my opinion, if a person wants to go when they are in this severe state we should honor that wish and see to it that they go in a humane way.

Allowing people to suffer when they have no hope of recovery is cruel and unusual punishment.

Isabel Logins

Isabel Logins, 18, is a Mass Communications/Journalism major at Wolfson Campus. She will serve as a briefing writer for The Reporter during the 2015-2016 school year. Logins aspires to be a news anchor for a major news station or for the Florida Panthers hockey team. Her interests include reporting, playing the piano and writing music.

Isabel Logins has 18 posts and counting. See all posts by Isabel Logins

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