Montana's courting of physician aid in dying: Could Des Moines follow suit?

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur G. Svenson
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Lethal Dose ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Appellate Court ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Aid In Dying

Montana recently joined Oregon and Washington as the only states in the nation to legalize the choice among terminally ill adults to hasten death by self-administering a lethal dose of drugs prescribed by a physician. Unlike Oregon and Washington, however, Montana's legalization of physician aid in dying (PAID) resulted not from public consideration of a statewide initiative, but from the judicial resolution of a lawsuit, Baxter v. Montana. As originally conceived, a trial judge reasoned that the unenumerated right to PAID is embraced by enumerated state constitutional rights to privacy and dignity. On appeal, Montana's supreme court jettisoned this construct, and, in its place, fashioned a legal home for PAID out of state homicide, consent defense, and end-of-life statutes. Central to this court's statutory rendering is the finding that state law, allowing terminally ill Montanans sustained by life support to withdraw such treatment and die, discriminates against terminally ill Montanans not sustained by life support who seek death; these classes are similar, the justices reckoned, entitling both to choose death. This analysis examines Montana's courting of PAID, offering textual examination of state trial and appellate court opinions, an accounting of legal strategies advanced in amici curiae briefs, and commentary about the problems and prospects with Baxter's holding. I argue, ultimately, that the equality principles statutorily conceived in Baxter (1) could be parroted in the vast majority of states that both criminalize assisted suicide and enumerate constitutional equal protection guarantees, and (2) could replace sub silentio the equal protection paradigm applied to “physician-assisted suicide” by the United States Supreme Court in its landmark Vacco v. Quill ruling.

Terminal Sedation: Palliative Care for Intractable Pain, Post Glucksberg and Quill

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-76
Author(s):  
Rob McStay
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Intractable Pain ◽  
Terminal Sedation ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
The Right ◽  
Artificial Life Support ◽  
Unconscious State

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court tacitly endorsed terminal sedation as an alternative to physician-assisted suicide, thus intensifying a debate in the legal and medical communities as to the propriety of terminal sedation and setting the stage for a new battleground in the “right to die” controversy. Terminal sedation is the induction of an unconscious state to relieve otherwise intractable distress, and is frequently accompanied by the withdrawal of any life-sustaining intervention, such as hydration and nutrition. This practice is a clinical option of “last resort” when less aggressive palliative care measures have failed. Terminal sedation has also been described as “the compromise in the furor over physician-assisted suicide.”Medical literature suggests that terminal sedation was a palliative care option long before the Supreme Court considered the constitutional implications of physician-assisted suicide. Terminal sedation has been used for three related but distinct purposes: (1) to relieve physical pain; (2) to produce an unconscious state before the withdrawal of artificial life support; and (3) to relieve non-physical suffering.

AMA Reconsiders Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Ralph A. Capone ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Judicial Affairs ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Recent Edition

In 1847, the American Medical Association established the first professional code of ethics for physicians in the United States. Expanded over the years to meet the needs of the medical profession, its most recent edition, adopted in 2016, includes a statement of AMA principles of medical ethics and eleven sets of opinions on various topics. After 169 years of opposition to physician involvement in directly causing patients’ deaths, the AMA is considering a change in its position—a position that has always averred the sacredness of every human life, asserting that the physician’s role is to cure when possible, care always, and ultimately err on the side of protecting and preserving human life. Following its annual meeting this past June, the AMA House of Delegates recommended that the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs study aid-in-dying as an end-of- life option and report back at the annual meeting in 2017.

Writing the Rules of Death: State Regulation of Physician-Assisted Suicide

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-216
Author(s):  
Jack Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Lethal Dose ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Medical Treatments ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
Death State

If the Supreme Court affirms either Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington or Quill v. Vacco, state legislatures will be presented with a new and unwelcome task: regulating physician-assisted suicide (PAS). This article focuses on the states task of specific policy making in light of the due process reasoning in Compassion in Dying and the equal protection reasoning in Quill. Policy makers must try to predict whether a particular regulation would in practice achieve its intended objective. They must also try to predict whether the regulation would survive constitutional review if challenged. Finally, they must consider the extent to which they could, or should, maintain two different regulatory regimes: a more permissive one for decisions to forgo life-sustaining medical treatments, and a more restrictive one for decisions to obtain a prescription for a lethal dose of medication. This last issue will be especially challenging if the equal protection analysis in Quill prevails.

Rights of the Terminally Ill Act of the Australian Northern Territory

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intractable Pain ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Court Of Appeals

Over the past year the debate over physician-assisted death has been waged in several courts and legislatures, and before at least one electorate as well. Measure 16, the Oregon Death With Dignity initiative that would permit physician-assisted suicide in some circumstances, was approved by the electorate; but it remains on hold while a permanent injunction issued against it by a Federal judge is reviewed by the United States Court of Appeals. Another Federal court judge's decision that the Washington statute criminalizing physician-assisted suicide was unconstitutional when applied to the case of a competent terminally ill patient in intractable pain, was reversed by a three judge panel of that same United States Court of Appeals.

Physician Aid-in-Dying: Toward A “Harm Reduction” Approach

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Heilig ◽  
Stephen Jamison
Keyword(s):  
Social Issue ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
The United States ◽  
Active Euthanasia ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Bioethical Issue ◽  
The World ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
The 1960S

As a bioethical and social issue, euthanasia has become in the 1990s what abor- tion was in the 1960s. Around the world, a de facto taboo on open discussion of the practice is seemingly falling by the wayside, as recognition increases that “active” euthanasia is taking place in spite of social and legal prohibitions. Euthanasia, or more specifically physician-assisted suicide, has become the most visible bioethical issue of the present era; and in the United States the debate has taken on a prominence and urgency unprecedented in our nation's history.

Right to Try and Physician Assisted Suicide: Similar or Different?

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 122-122
Author(s):  
Andrea Martani ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right To Die ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Terminally Ill Patients ◽  
Conflicting Interests ◽  
Life Circumstances ◽  
Experimental Treatments ◽  
The Right

"In the last few years, the debate whether terminally ill patients should have access to experimental treatments without governmental supervision has intensified. The so-called “Right-to-Try” (RTT) doctrine has become popular especially in the United States, where the federal parliament passed a bill allowing such practices. As many other policies concerning patients’ autonomy in end-of-life circumstances, the appropriateness of RTT has often been challenged. In this context, some authors recently put forward the argument that states where it is allowed to request physician assisted suicide (PAS) should also necessarily recognize a RTT. In the authors’ own words: “if states can give a terminally ill patient the right to die using medications with 100% probability of being unsafe and ineffective against his/her disease [i.e. the substances used for PAS], they should also be able to grant terminally ill patients a right to try medications with less than 100% probability of being unsafe and ineffective [i.e. ET]”. In this contribution, I will question this argument by underlying three flaws in the authors’ comparison of RTT and PAS. First, there is a fundamental distinction in the nature of the choices between the two situations concerning the (un)certainty of their outcomes. Second, the number of actors (and their potential conflicting interests) involved in these two situations is different. Third, the authors’ understanding of the object of patients’ rights in PAS is partially incorrect. I will conclude by arguing that, although reasons might exist to support RTT, such comparison with PAS is not one of them. "

Physician-Assisted Death: Can Philosophical Bioethics Aid Social Policy?

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-347
Author(s):  
MARK G. KUCZEWSKI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Left Behind

The debate regarding physician-assisted suicide continues in our society. Despite the recent opinions of the United States Supreme Court, this issue is unlikely to go away anytime soon. For a variety of reasons, this debate is now conducted in the legalistic terms of individual rights and liberties. As a result, perhaps we philosophers have been left behind. This is now a matter for the legal arena and philosophy is likely to be irrelevant. I would like to suggest otherwise for two reasons.

Oregon v. Ashcroft: The Battle over the Soul of Medicine

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN A. RICH
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
War Of Attrition ◽  
Dying Patients ◽  
Medical Disputes ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Death With Dignity Act ◽  
Dignity Act

When one considers the protracted and continuing struggle of the citizens of Oregon to include physician-assisted suicide (also known as “physician aid in dying”) among the panoply of measures available to dying patients and the physicians who care for them, the depth and breadth of the issue becomes inescapable. The potential intractability of the dispute is illustrated by the very fact, noted in the preceding parenthetical phrase, that consensus eludes us on even the most basic of semantic points—how we are to most aptly characterize the conduct in question? The case featured in this issue's The Caduceus in Court must be examined as the latest battle in a long war of attrition waged by opponents of physician-assisted suicide against the Oregon Death with Dignity Act (“the Oregon Act”). After briefly reviewing that history, I will then consider the details of Oregon v. Ashcroft and the implications of the litigation not only for the care of dying patients but also for the regulation of medical practice in the United States and, more broadly still, the search for resolution of serious medical disputes in a democratic society.

A Middle Ground on Physician-Assisted Suicide

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Tulsky ◽  
Ann Alpers ◽  
Bernard Lo
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Lethal Dose ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Criminal Prosecution ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Terminally Ill Patients ◽  
Criminal Charges ◽  
Legal Defense ◽  
Court Of Appeal

“[A] murder prosecution is a poor way to design an ethical and moral code for doctors,” observed the California Court of Appeal in 1983. Yet, physicians who have chosen to help terminally ill patients to commit suicide have trespassed on illegal ground. When skilled medical care fails to relieve the pain of terminally ill patients, some people believe that physicians may assist in these suicides. Others reject any kind of physician involvement. The debate on assisted suiczide and active euthanasia has focused on whether these acts can ever be acceptable. We propose to shift the debate to a less divisive issue: whether a caring physician who provides a suffering and ill patient with a prescription for a lethal dose of medication should be prosecuted as a felon. Even assisted suicide's opponents may object to such criminal prosecution. We propose to modify existing criminal laws to give physicians who assist their terminally ill patients in suicide, under carefully defined circumstances, a legal defense against criminal charges.

Physician-Assisted Suicide and the Rise of Secularism

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Karen Wenger ◽  
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Life Issues ◽  
Wish To Die ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
The Media ◽  
End Of Life Issues

The media has been instrumental in disseminating and glamorizing physician-assisted suicide, also known as aid in dying and medical aid in dying The organization Compassion and Choices claims that people seeking physician-assisted suicide want to live, carefully plan their demise, and often include family, while those who choose suicide are not terminally ill and wish to die, are typically impulsive in their decision, and act independently of family. The award-winning documentary How to Die in Oregon examines both sides of the debate and features several individuals as they struggle with end-of-life issues. The filmmakers help the viewer ponder important questions about the purported benefit of physician-assisted suicide.

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