See Which States Allow Assisted Suicide
Brittany Maynard was one of hundreds of people in five states who've taken advantage of death with dignity laws
Few issues are more personal—or divisive—than ending a life with a doctor’s lethal prescription.
The issue has sparked
national debate recently, after Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman
who had terminal brain cancer, went public with her decision to end her
own life. She did so on Saturday in Oregon.
Maynard is one of more than 750 people in
Oregon who have ingested a lethal dose of prescription medication since
the Death with Dignity Act went into effect in 1997. While Oregon has
had increased participation over the last 16 years and has spurred
similar legislation in other states, aid-in-dying laws remain a
lightning rod of contention and deliberation.
Advocates say competent
patients should have a right to choose how they die if they are already
in the process of dying from a terminal illness. Opponents counter that
such a precedent is ripe for abuse.
The battle has been
shaped over many years. In the 1990s, Jack Kevorkian assisted in the
deaths of more than a hundred terminally ill people to much public
outcry. In 2009, politicians sparred over a provision in the Affordable
Care Act concerning end-of-life consultations – called “death panels” by
critics – to help control health-care costs. (Roughly 28%, or $170
billion, of Medicare is spent on patients’ last six months of life,
according to Medicare Newsgroup.)
Here is how aid-in-dying laws look today, and a snapshot of the ways in which they are implemented:
end quote from:http://time.com/3551560/brittany-maynard-right-to-die-laws/
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