First shows up in ngram around 1982
1998: Roper- People were asked if they favored or opposed physician assisted suicide (42% Favor, 47% Oppose, 11% Not Sure)
1999: Roper- People were asked if they favored or opposed physician assisted suicide (45% favor, 46% oppose, 9% not sure)
1998: Roper: People were asked (A 72-year old male with lung cancer is told by his doctor that the cancer has begun to spread throughout his body and that chemical and radiation treatments do not seem to be working. The doctor tells him that he can expect to get continually worse with more and more pain and to die in 18 months…. How much do you agree or disagree with the following options for this person?…Strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree)…This person should… ask for physician-assisted suicide. ( 17% strongly agree, 18% agree, 12% neither agree nor disagree, 27% disagree, 20% strongly disagree, 6% don’t know)
2005: roper- people were asked do you favor or oppose legalizing physician assisted suicide for terminally ill patients (48% favor, 39% oppose, 13% not sure)
2005: Gallup- 3/4 Americans believe in euthanasia but only 58% support doctor-assisted suicide
gallup
“That referendum passed with support from 60% of Oregon voters, and a new Gallup Poll conducted during the weekend of March 12-14 shows 61% of Americans believe doctors should be allowed to help a terminally ill patient who is living in severe pain commit suicide. ” – gallup
Possible reasons for increase in support:
“Americans’ views on euthanasia have evolved, generally becoming more liberal, and could shift further as states continue to debate a suffering patient’s right to die. But support for euthanasia has not been a steady, upward climb; unique cases like those of Terri Schiavo and, more recently, Brittany Maynard, have influenced the national conversation. For the time being, more than two-thirds of national adults continue to support euthanasia — with majorities in favor even among the least supportive groups, such as weekly churchgoers.”
-Brittany Maynard was 29 when she moved to Oregon to take advantage of their Right-to-die law. She was in the public eye as a supporter of legalizing assisted suicide. this was in 2014 and brought a lot of attention to the issue and helped shift national opinion.
-Terri Schiavo 2005- was in a vegetative state for 15 years. husband wanted to take the feeding tube out because he didn’t think she would want to live like that. Deeply religious parents disagreed.
For the sake of narrowing down what your shift is- you are doing the shift from disapproval of assisted suicide to acceptance? I think that the Ngram searches as well as the diagram comparing assisted suicide do less for your argument than the discussion of specific cases such as Terry Schiavo. Even though euthanasia is a related issue, I think you would do better not to focus on this because it doesn’t allow you to draw any conclusions about an assisted-suicide related paradigm shift. The “Roper” source seems to be a wealth of knowledge regarding the topic of assisted suicide itself. I think you would benefit from drawing more from this source.
I like that you switched topics because you obviously have a lot of research available at your fingertips, and it still involves medicine which you are interested in. Good work adapting your approach and recognizing that the other paradigm shift didn’t have enough support. You could look into supreme court cases as well for a more in depth look at what politicians thought of physician assisted suicide and the precedents that they set.
I think that this is a good topic because physician assisted suicide is definitely more evident in modern days, and also you have a lot of information that you can work with. However, the shift seems more gradual, so looking at specific but small situations that made it change is also really important.