An exploration of the issues concerning euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.
This paper examines how, for the last few decades, the issue of a person?s right to choose the time and method of his or her own death has been one of passionate debate in the United States. It looks at how, although suicide has been decriminalized in America, laws against assisting in a suicide remain in place and how medical help for this action has been contested in the courts for years. It provides a definition of physician-assisted suicide and examines several high-profile court cases involving medical intervention in the dying process.
“When Dr. Jack Kevorkian helped Alzheimer’s patient Janet Adkins commit suicide in 1990, criminal charges were brought against him and then later dropped because Michigan law did not specify that facilitating a suicide is criminal. He then proceeded to assist twenty individuals commit suicide, ?five of them after Michigan passed a ban on assisted suicide in February 1993,? and in November 1993, he was jailed on murder charges. Circuit Judge Richard Kaufman ruled the Michigan law against assisted suicide was unconstitutional on December 13, 1993, however, one year later the Michigan State Supreme Court upheld the ban.”