Physician-Assisted Suicide

"Willingly providing a person with a substance or device, knowing that the person has the specific intent to use that means to cause his or her own death" (from Ascension Health System's Position Statement on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide).

Physician-assisted suicide is distinguished from euthanasia in so far as the physician provides the lethal drug with instructions for its use but is not the agent that administers the drug. The patient decides when and if to use the drug [Junkerman, LJ and Schiedermayer, DL, Practical Ethics for Students, Interns, and Residents: A Short Reference Manual. (Frederick, Md: University Publishing Group, 1994), 56].

Although common law and ruling judiciary opinions up through the U.S. Supreme Court recognize the right and "liberty interest" of patients to refuse treatments even if such refusal would allow them to die of the underlying pathology, the U.S. Supreme Court has never recognized a constitutionally protected right to assisted suicide. [See: Kamisar, Y, "Are Laws Against Assisted Suicide Unconstitutional," Hastings Center Report 23, 3 (1993): 32-41; Cruzan and Vacco v. Quill.] Nevertheless, Justice O’Connor, in her single concurring opinion on Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill , confirmed that individual states may, if they so choose, enact laws that legalize physician-assisted suicide. Oregon is the first and only state to have legalized physician-assisted suicide when it passed Measure 16, the "Death with Dignity Act."

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