Do the Terminally Ill Have a Right to Die?

Trendsetting Oregon

In Oregon, legislation was introduced in 1997 to permit physician-assisted suicide. Later in 1997, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide; however, the Court did not preclude individual states from legislating in favor of physician-assisted suicide. The Oregon legislation has, in consequence, remained operative and has been successfully utilized by a number of people. Under the Death With Dignity law, a person who sought physician-assisted suicide would have to meet certain criteria:
• The person must be terminally ill.
• The person must have six months or less to live.
• The person must make two oral requests for assistance in dying.
• The person must make one written request for assistance in dying.
• The person must convince two physicians that he or she is sincere and not acting on a whim, and that the decision is voluntary.
• The person must not have been influenced by depression.
• The person must be informed of "the feasible alternatives," including, but not limited to, comfort care, hospice care, and pain control.
• The person must wait for 15 days.
Oregon has taken the first step toward a universal law allowing physician-assisted suicide. While the rest of America has yet to follow suit, there are some groups of people who also strongly advocate the use of euthanasia. Their criteria for the procedure is as follows:
Advocates of voluntary euthanasia contend that if a person
(a) is suffering from a terminal illness;
(b) is unlikely to benefit from the discovery of a cure for that illness during what remains of her life expectancy;
(c) is, as a direct result of the illness, either suffering intolerable pain, or only has available a life that is unacceptably burdensome (because the illness has to be treated in ways that lead to her being unacceptably dependent on others or on technological means of life support);
(d) has an enduring, voluntary and competent wish to die (or has, prior to losing the competence to do so, expressed a wish to die in the event that conditions (a)-(c) are satisfied); and
(e) is unable without assistance to commit suicide,
then there should be legal and medical provision to enable her to be allowed to die or assisted to die.
Whether to live or die should strictly be the patient’s choice. While it should be taken into account the mental stability of the patient, the choice of life or death should ultimately come down to the decision of the patient, not a Supreme Court ruling. The debate of euthanasia stands only on moral and ethical grounds. It is a personal choice, and because of this, there cannot be laws forbidding it. If legalized, it can be used by those that qualify and want to use it, and those that do not want to use it do not have to. It is left to choice. In other words, if legalized, it will only benefit those that want to use it, and those that do not want to will not be affected. Since a law allowing euthanasia will only directly affect those that chose to use it, and because your body is your own, and your choice to live or die is your own, euthanasia should be a viable option for those that qualify.

Young, Robert, "Voluntary Euthanasia", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

http://law.jrank.org/pages/6602/Euthanasia-Oregon-s-Euthanasia-Law.html