Beyond Washington v. Glucksberg: Oregon's Death with Dignity Act analyzed from medical and constitutional perspectives.

Oregon's guidelines for physician-assisted suicide: a legal and ethical analysis.

Oregon's Death with Dignity Act was first passed by a ballot initiative in 1994, but numerous judicial challenges delayed implementation of the Act. In November of 1997, following the United States Supreme Court decisions in Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg, which left the states' power to regulate physician-assisted suicide undisturbed, the Oregon voters upheld their law. Oregon rem...

Oregon's experience with aid in dying: findings from the death with dignity laboratory.

With passage of the Death with Dignity Act in 1994, Oregon became the first jurisdiction to authorize and regulate aid in dying. Data from that experience are comprehensive and bountiful, and answer a multitude of questions and concerns about whether the benefits of recognizing the medical practice of aid in dying justify the risks. An exhaustive description of findings from Oregon's aid-in-dyi...

Euthanasia: a matter of life or death?

right to hasten death’ ... but on well established, traditional rights to bodily integrity and freedom from unwanted touching.”41 Taken in their totality, these cases show that the American courts have cleaved closely to the guiding principle of one’s liberty to refuse unwanted medical treatment, and have thus far shown no signs of crossing to the other side of the act-omission divide. 35. Wash...

Seeking compassion in dying: the Washington State law against assisted suicide.

In May of 1994, federal district Judge Barbara Rothstein ruled in Compassion in Dying v. Washington' that certain terminally-ill adults have a constitutional right to commit physician-assisted suicide. Six months later, Oregon voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative allowing certain terminally-ill adults to obtain physicians' prescriptions for lethal drugs.2 These parallel legal actions mo...

Who defers to whom? The Attorney General targets Oregon's Death with Dignity Act.