Confronting End-of-Life Decisions: Should We Expand the Right to Die?

• NCJ Number: 171980
• Journal: Federal Lawyer Volume: 44 Issue: 4 Dated: (May 1997) Pages: 30-37
• Author(s): K R Thomas
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 8 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article examines the legal issues involved in the various ways in which seriously ill persons can accelerate the end of their lives.

Abstract

There are at least five different legal issues involved: suicide; passive euthanasia (allowing a person to die by refusal or withdrawal of medical intervention); assisted suicide (providing a person the means to commit suicide); active euthanasia (killing another); and palliative care (providing comfort care, such as high levels of narcotics, that accelerates the death process). Another category that has been suggested is physician-assisted suicide, which is apparently an uncertain blend of assisted suicide and active euthanasia undertaken by a licensed physician. The legal consequences of engaging in each of these activities are significantly different. They are examined in this article. Even among people who favor an expansion of a patient's options to exercise the "right to die," there is little agreement about where the lines should be drawn. Various advocates have suggested that such expansion could be limited to patients with terminal illness. Others suggest that some calculus could be developed that would consider high levels of pain, futile prognosis, and diminished quality of life. Most of these advocates, however, reject the notion that such rights should be available to patients on the basis of mental or emotional disorders, such as clinical depression. The problem with all of these positions is that death is not a simple or predictable process. The medical community has done little to define the physician's role in end-of-life situations, and the legal and political community has not done much better. State legislatures have made only piecemeal attempts to confront end-of-life decisions, leaving courts to address the issue with inadequate precedent, inapplicable legislation, murky constitutional theory, and clashing legal doctrines.