The Case For Euthanasia: Should Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legalized?

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active and passive
euthanasia. Passive euthanasia involves the patient's refusal of medical
assistance. It involves the right to die which is protected by the United
States Constitution clauses of due process liberty and the right to privacy
(Fourteenth Amendment). The right to doctor-assisted suicide, or active
euthanasia, consists of, "...a patient's right to authorize a physician to
perform an act that intentionally results in the patient's death, without
the physician's being held civilly or criminally liable for having caused
the death" . The "passive" form of euthanasia was first deemed legal by the
New Jersey State Supreme Court in 1976 In re Quinlan . In the Quinlan case,
the court allowed a competent patient to terminate the use of life-
sustaining medical machines to prolong life. Since New Jersey's decision,
all fifty states have enacted similar statutes which contain living will
provisions. However, although the United States Supreme Court upheld the
Quinlan decision ...

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laws to, more often than not, make doctor-assisted
suicide illegal. However, when a case comes to trial it is usually
dismissed either by the judge in a pretrial motion or by the jury. For
example, in at least three of the assisted suicides which Dr. Kevorkian was
involved in, all criminal charges were dismissed. So, the laws have been
created, but when it comes to convicting a doctor and sending him to prison,
in lieu of the circumstances, the law often breaks down and the charges are
dismissed or the doctor is acquitted. In the case of the nineteen states
which have not delineated the criminality of doctor-assisted suicide, the
issue becomes less clear. Many of these states have a hard ...

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