Last Rights: Physician-Assisted Suicide

At the edge of a mainstream movement to give dying patients control over their medical care is a struggle to legalize physician-assisted suicide. That struggle has produced a Supreme Court ruling giving states the authority to establish or deny a so-called right to die.

It has led to the nation's first state-sanctioned plan to let doctors provide fatal prescriptions for terminally ill patients. It also has focused on the macabre circus atmosphere of Michigan pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

In Oregon, voters approved the world's only physician-assisted suicide law in the Nov. 4, 1997, election, by a 60-40 majority.

"Pain is not an issue because I have a high pain tolerance. Loss of independence and control, those are big items. I want to be independent and not slobber all over the place and be this shriveled-up human being."

--Dale Gilsdorf's story

Oregon's Death with Dignity Act applies to mentally competent state residents age 18 or older who are terminally ill. They may request a lethal dose of medication from an Oregon-licensed attending physician.

Moving in the other direction, a new law criminalizing assisted suicide went into effect Sept. 1 in Michigan. That legislation was passed in reaction to Kevorkian, who claims to have helped more than 90 people end their lives.

The new law makes it explicitly illegal for anyone who knows that someone intends to kill himself to provide means, help or participation. Violation would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison or a $10,000 fine.

-- Dr. Mark Adams, Bremerton,WA, surgeon

Elsewhere in the United States, proponents of legalized physician-assisted suicide have fought and lost most battles. The New York challenge ended in the Supreme Court's 1997 decision. California voters turned it down in 1992; the Florida Supreme Court said no in 1996.

Hawaii, a Democratic state known for tolerance, will take up the issue when the legislature meets in January.

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