What we should know about Assisted Suicide

Assisted Suicide is a complicated issue for law around the world and it has provoke a hot debate everywhere. In some countries, Assisted Suicide laws are clear but in others the law does not provide a clear message about it. This causes confusion, especially in the countries where the criminal code is not defined around the topic.

People tend to think that each person has the right and freedom to decide on a suicide or an assited suicide, and this is the reason why it occurs, even in those countries where it is forbidden. In most cases of Assisted Suicide, the people who help another one to die end in deep trouble with the law, but whichever the resolution that the law apply to them will depend on the country where the event takes place.

Although there are place where Assisted Suicide is legal, this doesn’t mean that anyone can committed. Firts of all, it is important to remember that Assisted Suicide is the process by which an individual is provided with the means (drugs or equipment) to commit suicide, because he or she is incapable of doing it. And this definition clearly shows a distinction between the case of an assited death and that of a simply suicide, the former being sometimes permitted and the later being completely forbiden by the law. Assisted suicide is then allowed in some places such as the Netherlands, Swistzerland and some states of the US, but only under strict criteria. And the procedure involves many doctors that should agree in the decision together with the patient, and some witnesses. In some cases the procedure does not succed and it has some complications for the pacient, for what the people involved in it previously sign a sort of contract where the details as regarding their responsibility is specified.

The most traumatic consequence of an Assisted Suicide that does not succed is when the result of the procedure does not end in the death of the patient but it puts he or she under coma. In such a case, the doctors and the relatives of the patient can still decide to provided him or her with Euthanasia. This term refers to suicide which is performed by people other than the patient and which does not involve the choice of the patient.