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Physician-Assisted Suicide as a Constitutional Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

John E. Linville
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Extract

The legal treatment of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is in flux. Reform has been impelled by several forces, including the recent success of novel constitutional arguments in the Ninth and Second Circuit Courts of Appeals. I will review and discuss Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington and Quill v. Vacco, addressing the constitutional arguments, and then briefly considering the attractions and difficulties of these new constitutional theories.

Before 1990, state criminal laws dealing with assisted suicide had reached a remarkably stable consensus: suicide was not illegal, but assisting suicide was a criminal action with no distinction typically made between physicians and others who assisted. The details of the relevant criminal law varied from state to state. Some states had criminal statutes specifically addressing assisted suicide, while others treated the practice under more general homicide statutes. But in no state was it clearly legal for a physician to prescribe a lethal medication at the request of a dying patient. While remarkable legal developments took place during the 1970s and 1980s regarding other aspects of the rights of dying patients (including the right to refuse resuscitation and other life-sustaining treatments and the right to withdraw from life-sustaining treatment including nutrition and hydration), there was relative quiescence regarding the law of PAS.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , Fall 1996 , pp. 198 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1996

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References

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