Here is a link to a good post by Wesley Smith noting that the Swiss law allowing assisted suicide is being extended to an increasingly larger number of “target groups.” Here’s the opening of the post: “Once a society accepts the fundamental premises of assisted suicide–e.g., radical individualism and killing as an acceptable answer to suffering–there really are […]
Category: Assisted suicide
Here is a LifeNews.com story about a decision from the British Columbia Supreme Court holding a ban on assisted suicide unconstitutional. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/06/15/canadas-assisted-suicide-ban-struck-down-in-court/ Here’s critical commentary from Wesley Smith. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2012/06/15/bc-judge-creates-right-to-suicide/ Richard M.
Georgia has now banned assisted suicide. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/01/georgia-bans-assisted-suicide-after-final-exit-network-flouted-law/ Georgia’s law banning advertising for assisted suicide had been held unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds. This new law bans the practice of assisted suicide, and according to the Lifenews article, makes Georgia the 39th state with such a criminal prohibition. Richard M.
Here is a link to a post by Wesley Smith discussing the efforts of disability rights organizations to oppose the assisted suicide initiative in Massachusetts. Smith notes: “Media like to portray assisted suicide opponents as primarily religious or pro life. But the facts don’t fit that supposed story. Disability rights advocates–who are mostly politically liberal […]
Here is a link to Wesley Smith’s insighful commentary on the recently issued report in the UK from the Commission on Assisted Dying. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2012/01/04/uk-pro-assisted-suicide-report-pushes-a-pentimento/ Smith concludes that this report is further evidence that England “is undergoing a tragic slow motion moral collapse.” Richard M.
Here is a link to a post on Wesley Smith’s blog about a position paper from the Dutch Physician’s Association seeking to expand the factors to be considered in assessing whether a patient’s suffering is “unbearable,” thus making the patient eligible for assisted suicide. According to the article to which Smith refers–“Until now, factors such as income […]
Legalized PAS and the Werther Effect Evidence suggests that legalized PAS will result in a greater number of suicides more generally (and not simply amongst the population who opt for legalized PAS). We will have great difficulty, on the one hand, giving our and medicine’s approval to suicide as the solution to complex problems at […]
The issue of assisted suicide seemed to have been settled in Canada in 1993 by the Supreme Court decision in the case of Sue Rodriguez. In a five to four decision the Court ruled that the state’s obligation to protect the vulnerable outweighed the rights of individuals to self-determination. Now two new cases, one from British Columbia […]
SSRN has a new student article, Exploring the Potential for American Death Tourism. The author discusses the availability of physician assisted suicide in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg, and the possibility that American citizens will travel to these countries to die. He evaluates the enforcement and efficacy of foreign laws prohibiting travel for purposes […]
Public Discourse blog has a new posting by Adam MacLeod, Assisted Suicide: the Forgotten Front in the Fight for Life. He mentions the Massachusetts ballot initiative that was certified for the ballot by the state attorney general last week. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine is among the initiative supporters. […]