Legal Status of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Physician-assisted suicide: the legal slippery slope.

BACKGROUND In Oregon, physicians can prescribe lethal amounts of medication only if requested by competent, terminally ill patients. However, the possibility of extending the practice to patients who lack decisional capacity exists. This paper examines why the legal extension of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) to incapacitated patients is possible, and perhaps likely. METHODS The author revi...

Last rights? Confronting physician-assisted suicide in law and society: legal liturgies on physician-assisted suicide.

and the Director of the Center for Law and Aging at Stetson. ** Dr. D. Dixon Sutherland is a Professor of Religious Studies at Stetson University and the Director of the Institute for Christian Ethics. 1. The term of art for this has been dubbed by the popular press as physicianassisted suicide (PAS). However, describing the requested act as a suicide has added confusion to the debate over PAS,...

MSJAMA. The legal and political future of physician-assisted suicide.

IN 1997, THE US SUPREME COURT RULED THAT THERE IS NO federal constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide (PAS) but implied that individual states could nevertheless enact statutes permitting its practice. The lower federal courts promptly upheld the constitutionality of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, the only US state statute authorizing PAS. Many observers of the court’s opinions th...

Physician-assisted suicide: the legal and practical contours.

This paper considers current medical and legal perspectives on patients' right to assistance in dying. In highlighting the competing policy objectives that must be resolved, it examines failed legislative initiatives in Washington and California. It also considers a pending New Hampshire proposal. The last shows the difficulty of simultaneously alleviating physician's objections and achieving p...

Legal/legislative issues in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.