Hospice is a philosophy of care that accepts death as a natural part of life. When death is unavoidable, hospice seeks neither to rush nor delay death. Also known as assisted suicide, it is a very controversial issue. There have been very strong opinions form both for and against assisted suicide. Each side having justified reasons of why they believe that it should or should not be allowed. But the fact is, that some patients have respectable reasons for their request in their passing. There are people out there have very little of their life left to live, and they would like to move along based on their own terms.
Hospice is already occurring especially in the United States today. It deals with basically the same thing as assisted suicide, when a doctor consoles the patient's family, and come to a decision of pulling the plug. The patient cannot help but lay there, helplessly, until total body failure. In this situation here the life of a person is placed in the hands of the family and doctor. In both situations here a life of a person is being place on the line. Which option sounds more just, the option of a person's life being taken form them based on the decision of someone else, or the option of a terminally ill person choosing to die based on one's own decision.
Hospice is defined as being, the provision of a means to end one's life, such as a prescription for lethal amount of a drugs or the drug itself. It is said that an assisted suicide occurs every day, yet Oregon is the only state where assisted suicide has been legalized. In 1997 the Death with Dignity Act was finalized, taking nearly three years for it to come into action. Before any one can qualify, first you must be a legal resident of Oregon; must at least be 18 years of age, capable of communicating his or her health care decisions, have less than six months to live, and must request the assistance twice. But the requests must be separated by 15 days.
