Resolved: The United States Federal Government should legalize Physician Assisted Suicide.

I think that for the overall success of this debate and for the comprehension of it by the readers, we should begin confident of what all terminology and related terminology mean, some of which haven't yet been covered. So let me take some time to explain the bigger picture. Let's start with regular euthanasia (EUTH); EUTH is most accurately described as the taking of another's life by a doctor in order to relieve them of their chronic and terminal pains or future mental degradation. Very extreme forms of EUTH existed in the Nazi regime, where the societal unproductive, disabled in mind or body, and those of a specific race or cultural background were 'euthanized' aka murdered. The main idea being that these people are deficient and not worthy of life. The normal form of EUTH is of course much, much less extreme, usually it is simply a doctor injecting a patient with a lethal drug or cutting of their life support. Here is where euthanasia splits into 2 different divisions. A, is active/ involuntary euthanasia where the doctor does not have any specific permission from the one being euthanized, it comes from other sources whether it be family, or Nazi regime in the past. In this case, the doctor would do something like inject the patient with a lethal drug.The second division of EUTH, B, is passive/voluntary EUTH; where the patient specifically asks the doctor to end their life and under no other party's directive. The doctor will then: pull the plug on life support/ stop giving them medicine/ let the disease take its course.Now we come to Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS), This is where the patient explicitly asks the doctor to give them: medicine, injection...etc. which they will then inject/breath through mask/drink...etc., specifically with the patient doing the action which ends their life. I will defend that PAS is: very passive euthanasia. I believe so because in regular passive EUTH the patient doesn't even pull their own cord, it is the doctor. So in PAS all the doctor does is give them the ability to pull their own cord, which I think is better, because it gives them much more control....Keep in mind that right now, if a family member wishes, they can pull the plug on say a dying father on his last limb in the hospital. This is true in ALL U.S. states. What is really the difference between PAS and puling the plug? Americans generally support the right to physician-assisted suicide, though the number varies depending on how the issue is framed. As of 2013 it was as high as 71% when the phrase "end the patient's life by some painless means" was used. That dropped to 51% when the phrase "commit suicide" was introduced.But what about the physicians themselves?According to a survey published Dec. 17 by Medscape, an online professional network and information source for physicians, 54% of doctors answered the question, "Should physician-assisted suicide be allowed?" with a yes. click="document.location='/TheJuniorVarsityNovice/photos/album/4636/30510/'" src="../../../photos/albums/1/5/4636/226693-4636-e89c3-a.jpg" alt="" /> For this survey, Medscape asked more than 21,000 physicians a list of ethical questions. More than 17,000 of them were US doctors, while 4,000 European physicians responded.Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com...In contention 1 my opponent gives us a truck load of facts, however even though he calls them "horrible" he never says why. He wants viewers to assume: A, that these people were simply murdered which is expressly untrue, and B, that this indicates a s but beyond that he has not provided evidence to support this suggested assumption so please do no consider this until it is properly warranted and explained. Also his source for this was labeled as an error which should be in the "opinions sections" of the website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... In contention 2 my opponent states that passing laws allowing any form of EUTH leads to massive and involuntary euthanasia however I would actually classify this claim under the Slippery-Slope fallacy because there have only been facts presented thus far, yet these facts alone do not indicate that passive EUTH has lead to involuntary EUTH; he may have stated that but that doesn't make it true. For instance he stated that strict laws were passed supported by medical associations in 1987 and less so in 2001. These are neat facts but that's is all they are, they don't imply actual cause and effect. Please remember that Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary proof! click="document.location='/TheJuniorVarsityNovice/photos/album/4636/30510/'" src="../../../photos/albums/1/5/4636/226693-4636-u9ags-a.jpg" alt="" /> In contention 3 my opponent basically states that the sickly just need to take ownership and get over their pain. I state that most people who are terminally ill aren't irrational they are simply regular people who are in constant and unbearable pain, with thoughts still intact. Please provide evidence stating that all people who are chronically ill are irrational, only then can we accept contention 3.Here are quotes which attack statements and assumptions made during the last round:"There is no evidence demonstrating that the Netherlands has a greater rate of non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia than other Western countries. Indeed, there is a significant amount of evidence demonstrating the prevalence of both voluntary and involuntary active euthanasia in various jurisdictions in which euthanasia has not been legalized, looking at criminal prosecutions, admissions by doctors and anonymous surveys of medical professionals." -Penney Lewis, LLM, Reader in Law at the School of Law and Centre of Medical Ethics at Kings College, stated in a Spring 2007 Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: article titled "The Empirical Slippery Slope from Voluntary to Non-Voluntary Euthanasia"Basically there is evidence that the percent of involuntary EUTH is less is the same in countries without legislation on the matter and as will be shown next, the legislation has actually decreased the amount of involuntary EUTH"look to the Netherlands, where they’ve had progressive laws on assisted dying for over a decade now. In 2005, a study by the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 0.4 percent of all euthanasia procedures were carried out without the patient’s explicit permission. You might argue that that’s 0.4 percent too many, but get this: A 1991 report—written a decade before euthanasia was legalized—put the number at 0.8 percent. In other words, giving a nationwide go-ahead for doctors to legally end their patient’s lives actually halved the number of unwanted deaths. But hey, that’s just Holland, right? They do things differently there. Doctors in a less-hippie-liberal culture would never kill off patients without their consent, right? Well think again. In Britain, a 2012 study discovered that as many as 57,000 patients each year die without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped. Instead, they’re just shoved onto a “death pathway” designed to alleviate suffering without ever being told. So basically, doctors in the UK are already practicing euthanasia—only without any of the legal framework to check abuses that would come from legalizing it." -http://listverse.com..."In 2005, of all deaths in the Netherlands, 1.7% were the result of euthanasia and 0.1% were the result of physician-assisted suicide. These percentages were significantly lower than those in 2001, when 2.6% of all deaths resulted from euthanasia and 0.2% from assisted suicide." -Agnes van der Heide, MD, PhD, Senior Researcher in the Department of Public Health at Erasmus University As far as the Hyppocratic Oath, the problem arises when "Do no harm" is said, however it does more harm to let live in these cases