For the rights of the terminal, or hopelessly physically ill, competent adult
www.assistedsuicide.org
Updated April 06, 2008
Evaluating Dr. Kevorkian’s contribution to the right-to-die movement in America
The release of Dr. Jack Kevorkian is welcome news. He has suffered the eight years of imprisonment with calm and fortitude and deserves a peaceful retirement. But the thought he might have any influence on further developments does not make any sense. And while we are currently among the media circus surrounding his release, it is time to look back at what went on and what the future holds.
Kevorkian was never a part of the organized right-to-die movement, and publicly scoffed at its efforts to change the law. He was a lone ranger on this issue. The general public is split about the worth of his contribution to achieving so-called ‘death with dignity’...
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Why assisted suicide for the mentally troubled is so problematic
For the 25 years that I have been campaigning for the right to choose to die, and get help with it, I have kept my arguments confined to the terminally ill and the hopelessly ill competent adult. People are always asking me why don't I include the mentally ill in the struggle. Here are nine reasons:
1. Poor mental health can be treated -- medications, psychotherapy etc -- whereas terminal illness followed by death is inevitable. Read more ...
What do you call an assisted death?
Controversy in Oregon about the best term to describe how a doctor helps a terminally ill person to die under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act (1994) set me thinking about all the terms we use to describe ways of dying and death. The row in Oregon is between people on the ‘choice’ side who abhor words like suicide, euthanasia, and Hemlock, while on the ‘anti-choice’ side they want the foregoing words to be clearly spelled out because, they think, it helps their opposing case. Read more ...
Controversial in death as in life, the Hemlock Society USA as a name died suddenly on June 13, 2003, in a boardroom in Denver, Colorado. It was 23 years old. Public relations experts and political strategists – leaning heavily on focus groups – were on hand to usher in the death knell. Months of agonizing debate had preceded the decision because no one could think of a better name!
Born in 1980 in my garage in Santa Monica, California, Hemlock went on to...
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The Future of the Right-To-Die Movement
When we look at what the right-to-die movement has achieved, against what it has wished to do, an honest person would agree that there is still a long, long way to go. The first signs of organized activity on this issue came in the late 1930s in Britain, but nothing really happened until the 1970s when the public -- the non-medical world -- woke up with a shock to the fact that we often die differently nowadays compared to our ancestors. Read more ...
Assisted Suicide Laws Around the World
Assisted suicide laws around the world are clear in some nations but unclear – if they exist at all – in others. Just because a country has not defined its criminal code on this specific action does not mean all assisters will go free. It is a complicated state of affairs. A great many people instinctively feel that suicide and assisted suicide are such individual acts of freedom and free will that they assume there are no legal prohibitions. This fallacy has brought many people into trouble with the law. Read more ...
Visit the Assisted-Suicide Blog maintained by Derek Humphry
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based in Oregon, USA. • Email
