Legalize Assisted Suicide

I. Assisted suicide is not murder.

A. can be considered ending another person's life without consent, with forethought, with interference of the natural process of death, and with the intent to do harm.

B. Assisted suicide does not fit the definition of murder.
1. Assisted suicide requires consent and a fifteen-day waiting period and the prognosis must be six months in Oregon.
2. Forethought is present when conducting assisted suicide, but it is also present when withdrawing futile treatment.
3. Both assisted suicide and futile treatment interfere with the natural process of death, though one is passive and the other is active, both are forms of euthanasia.
a. Life support prolongs life.
b. Assisted suicide shortens life.
4. When conducting assisted suicide, good intentions of relieving pain are present.
5. Furthermore, the patient, not the doctor, ends the life.

II. Terminally ill patients should be given the option of assisted suicide.
A. Patients have a "natural right," granted in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prevents states from depriving "any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." Autonomy is important to individuals in the U.S.
B. Preserving life, an interest of the state, is no longer an interest of a terminally ill patient who is in intense pain and wishes to die.
C. A quote from an opponent of assisted suicide, Justice Stevens: "In my judgment…it is clear that [the states'] so-called 'unqualified interest in the preservation of human life'…is not itself sufficient to outweigh the interest in liberty that may justify the only possible means of preserving a dying patient's dignity and alleviating her intolerable suffering."

Assisted suicide is not a bad thing, in fact, it is very good thing. Nobody should be forced to live or die against his or her individual will. I am not asking you to perform assisted suicide or to have assisted suicide performed on you.

I am asking that you sign this petition so that someone who is terminally ill and desperately wants and needs to end his or her own life is not prevented from doing so. When you sign this petition, you will be taking part in the relief of an enormous amount of pain and suffering in the state of Iowa.