AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Question 1: Synthesis Essay
Directions: The following prompt is based on the accompanying sources.
This question requires you to synthesize a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. Synthesis refers to combining the sources and your position to form a cohesive, supported argument and accurately citing sources. Your argument should be central; the sources should support this argument. Avoid merely summarizing sources.
Remember to attribute both direct and indirect citations.
Introduction
Since the 1960s medical science has made great progress in prolonging people’s lives, even those suffering from terminal illnesses. Some people think that individuals should be allowed access to medical assistance to end their lives voluntarily, when and how they choose. Known as assisted suicide (or physician-assisted suicide), this practice involves helping a person who is hopelessly ill to end his or her own life. Assisted suicide has strong supporters and opponents. The issue is likely to gain importance as scientists find new ways to prolong life, and the number of elderly people in the population grows. People in many countries debate whether assisted suicide should be legal.
Assignment
Read the following sources (including the introductory information) carefully. Then, write an essay in which you develop a position
You may refer to the sources by their titles (Source A, Source B, etc.) or by the descriptions in parentheses.
Source A (Bowden)
Source B (Coleman)
Source C (Fraser)
Source D (Prince)
Source E (King)
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Consider Percy Bridgman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, at 79, was entering the final stages of terminal cancer. Wracked with pain and bereft of hope, he got a gun and somehow found courage to pull the trigger, knowing he was condemning others to the agony of discovering his bloody remains. His final note said simply: "It is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself."
What lawmakers must grasp is that there is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives enact laws to enforce the idea that their God abhors suicide, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded.
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth—which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.
But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise—to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself—is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Assisted suicide is supposedly about terminal illness, not disability, so many question the legitimacy of disability groups "meddling" and trying to "take away" what they see as the general public's right to choose assisted suicide, some say when they're terminally ill, others say when they're suffering. The stated criteria vary between Compassion and Choices and Final Exit Network, among others, and some people switch group affiliations and eligibility criteria depending on the audience.
The disability experience is that people who are labeled "terminal," based on a medical prediction that they will die within six months, are—or will become—disabled.
The real issue is the reasons people ask for assisted suicide. Although intractable pain has been sold as the primary reason for enacting assisted suicide laws, it's really a "bait-and-switch" situation. The reasons doctors actually report for issuing lethal prescriptions are the patient's "loss of autonomy," "loss of dignity" and "feelings of being a burden."
Those feelings often arise when a person acquires physical impairments that necessitate relying on other people for help in tasks and activities formerly carried out alone. Those are disability issues. In a society that prizes physical ability and stigmatizes impairments, it's no surprise that previously able-bodied people equate disability with loss of dignity.
Studies of patient attitudes toward assisted suicide and euthanasia confirm that "[p]atients' interest in physician-assisted suicide appeared to be more a function of psychological distress and social factors than physical factors." "When patients ask for death to be hastened," another study concluded, "the following areas should be explored: the adequacy of symptom control; difficulties in the patient's relationships with family, friends, and health workers; psychological disturbances, especially grief, depression, anxiety...."
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Thirty-four states of the United States, including Washington and Oregon, have statutes explicitly criminalizing assisted suicide. Oregon, as the result of a citizen initiative ballot (Measure 16), has allowed a specific departure by permitting physician-assisted death under very restricted conditions. However, because of court challenges, initially no legally sanctioned physician-assisted death occurred. In May 1997, opponents of the law successfully persuaded the lower house of the Oregon Legislature to return Measure 16 to the voters for possible repeal. The principal opponents to Measure 16 are Physicians for Compassionate Care, whose leader is a devout Catholic.
In February 1997, the Ninth Circuit Federal appeals court upheld Measure 16 but allowed a stay to remain in effect until a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in June 1997 (considering also a similar opinion rendered by the Second Circuit Federal appeals court) and effectively refused to grant Americans a constitutional "right to die." "However, their ruling did not preclude states from passing laws that would establish such a right: in fact, five of the nine justices suggested they might support such a claim in the future" [quoted from D. Savage, Los Angeles Times]. In November 1997, 60% of Oregon voters rejected the attempt to repeal Measure 16. The federal appeals court lifted the stay that barred implementation of the law. Both proponents and opponents of this "only one of its kind in the world" statute predict "the adoption of similar measures in other states" [according to K. Murphy, Los Angeles Times].
A report on the first 14 months of experience with the Oregon Death with Dignity Act draws some preliminary conclusions. Fifteen persons, 13 with cancer, have used the act [as of mid-2000] to end their lives, an estimated 0.2% of those eligible. Loss of autonomy and of control of bodily functions, rather than pain, were apparently the most frequent motivators. Unmarried patients were disproportionately represented; otherwise, demographic factors and education were not predictive. No obvious abuses of the law or unintended consequences have occurred so far.
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
A doctor's calling is always to heal, never to harm. A doctor's calling is special, though not unique. None of us possesses a license, privilege, or permission to kill, but the healer who purposely kills puts into question, in a unique way, our culture's commitment to the sanctity of life. The scandal created by doctors who kill is great, much like that caused by lawyers who flout the law, or bishops—shepherds—who do not care about their flocks. Whenever someone whose profession centers upon a single good—healing or respect for law or caring for souls—tramples that good, the rest of us cannot help but wonder: is it a good after all? Maybe it is for some, but not for others? Who decides? Is all the talk of that good as supremely worthwhile idle chatter or, worse, cynical propaganda?
Do not intentionally kill. This is what it means—principally and essentially—to revere life. Making intentional killing of humans a serious crime is the earmark of society's respect for life. All our criminal laws against homicide (save for Oregon) make no exception—none whatsoever—for victims who say they want to die. Our law contains no case or category of "public service homicides," of people who should be dead. People hunting season is never open. Our laws against killing (except Oregon's) make no exception for those who suffer, even for those near death. None.
When someone commits the crime of murder, all we can say is that the victim's life was shortened. We know not by how much; the law does not ask, or care. After all, no one knows how much longer any of us shall live. Many persons who are the picture of health, in the bloom of youth, will die today in accidents, by another's hand, or of natural causes. Yes, we can say with confidence that someone's death, maybe Evelyn's, is near at hand. But so long as she draws breath, she has the same legal and moral right that you and I have not to be intentionally killed.
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions