The Right To Die
“Every person shall have the right to die with dignity; this right shall include the right to choose the time of one’s death and to receive medical and pharmaceutical assistance to die painlessly. No physician, nurse or pharmacist shall be held criminally or civilly liable for assisting a person in the free exercise of this right.”
Within the next half century, perhaps much sooner, the right to choose to die with dignity will be as widely recognized as the right to free speech or to exercise one’s religion.
Read the rest of the essay at International Herald Tribune
Oregon set off a fierce national debate when it passed a law in 1997 allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminal patients who want to end their lives. Now the administration is challenging that law in the Supreme Court—and reigniting the controversy over doctor-assisted dying.
Read the rest of the article at AARP (November 2005)
Many patients on respirators are not conscious and so cannot say whether they want to live or die. But Piergiorgio Welby is still full of words, hard and touching ones, that may be changing the way Italy thinks about euthanasia and other choices for the sick to end their own lives.
Read the rest of the article at New York Times (December 20, 2006)
