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Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground
- Lois Snyder, JD; and
- Arthur L. Caplan, PhD
- University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Physician-assisted suicide used to be a question for academics to debate. No more. Oregon has legalized the practice, and the data from the law's first year of implementation are in (1). Efforts are under way to legalize physician-assisted suicide in other states. Thirty-seven states currently prohibit assisted suicide—including physician-assisted suicide—by statute, and 8 states prohibit it under the common law or a homicide statute (2).
Will many other states quickly follow Oregon's lead? Probably not. In 1997 and 1998, bills on assisted suicide were introduced in 26 states. All were defeated. Voters in Michigan and Washington State rejected state ballot initiatives that would have legalized physician-assisted suicide. Many states, including Virginia, Michigan, South Carolina, Iowa, and Rhode Island, approved new bans on assisted suicide. However, Oregon has changed the landscape of the law and, arguably, the practice of medicine.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide (3, 4). States are free to ban it. However, they are also free to permit it, and Oregon has chosen to do so in certain circumstances (5). The inadequate state of end-of-life care continues to keep legalization on the front burner. By finding …
