When I hear people talk about the difficulty of euthanizing their elderly or desperately ill pets I immediately think that at least we accord our pets a more logical and merciful death than we do to our fellow humans. The wonders of modern medicine can be as much a curse as they are a blessing. We live in an unprecedented time when we can know what will probably kill us twenty years down the line. To modern doctors death is the enemy which must be fought to the last possible moment. Little concern is given to the quality of life of the patient/victim, only that they be kept alive.
The conspiracy is broad-based. Big Pharma wants to keep you on maintenance drugs and never seems to come up with cures. A patient cured is a customer lost. If they stumbled across a $1 cure for AIDS or cancer would we ever hear of it? And then there are the private, for-profit health insurance companies that are really legalized extortion and protection rackets sucking billions out of the health-care system for administration, profits and to pay lawyers to find ways not to honor the benefits spelled out in their policies. The patient is but a scrap of meat ground up in the gears of corporate medicine. If we truly have free will shouldn't we be allowed to opt out?
There are many reasons someone may want to take advantage of doctor assisted suicide. One would be to avoid a prolonged and torturous illness. Another might be to avoid being a burden to loved ones. There are also those who are alone in life and don't want to go through the steady drip, drip of watching their bodies deteriorate due to age. If the request is initiated by the patient, there is no outside duress and the patient has thought through their decision with the consul of medical professionals what gives the state the right to deny such a request no matter what the circumstances? Like back alley abortions unassisted suicides can be messy affairs that can lead to unintended consequences like paralysis or brain damage. The primary reason for legalizing abortions was to end horrific atrocities committed in non-clinical circumstances. Wouldn't the same argument apply to suicide?