![]() Jack Kevorkian performs his duties when dealing with a terminally ill patient who is determined to end their physical suffering. Moreover, the law must recognize the circumstances and pressure under which a physician like Dr. Because this concern about the integrity of physicians and the context in which they are performing PAS has not come to fruition, it is on state governments, and arguably the federal government, to at least lessen the charge from second degree murder to a punishment more befitting of the act of voluntary active euthanasia. In states such as Washington and Oregon who have legalized the practice, no such trend has materialized. At the root of this debate, there is a fear that some doctors will take advantage of their patients and that requests for PAS and instances of suicide will greatly increase. Jack Kevorkian (2001) is illustrative of the intense criminalization of PAS in states where it is not legalized, in which doctors who adhere to the requests of suffering patients and their families are charged with the same crimes as those who kill others with malicious intent. The Michigan Court of Appeals’s dismissal of Dr. Kevorkian’s appeal was dismissed on the grounds that this expanded right of privacy, specifically in regards to euthanasia, would be beyond the scope of the judiciary and that there is no “principled basis” for the court to legalize euthanasia. ![]() Glucksberg (1997), the Michigan Court of Appeals, whom Kevorkian appealed to over two years after his initial conviction, noted that the right to privacy could be expanded by legalizing euthanasia, which would then render all legal discussion and public action around PAS irrelevant. Using the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Washington v. While PAS and active euthanasia are both highly controversial in their own right, voluntary active euthanasia is more contentious because the doctor injects the patient, technically making it a homicide in a court of law, while PAS is often ruled as suicide. Ultimately, Kevorkian was convicted of murder because he lethally injected Youk, an act of voluntary active euthanasia, rather than the patient themselves, as had been done previously since the his many other patients were physically able to do so. According to the autopsy report, Youk’s death was declared a homicide by intravenous injection of substances. Both Youk, who was mentally competent, and his family wanted Dr. ![]() Kevorkian was ultimately convicted of second degree murder on Maafter he filmed himself for the television show 60 Minutes lethally injecting a patient named Thomas Youk who was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease and could not administer the injection himself. ![]() Kevorkian was a pathologist who faced several criminal trials throughout the 1990s for the deaths of patients whom he provided lethal injection to satisfy their requests for physician-assisted suicide. Furthermore, a court’s refusal to recognize the right to die allows the actions of PAS-administering doctors to fall under “affirmative aid in dying,” which exposes doctors to prosecution for murder.Ī highly contentious case regarding the difference between physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia was that of Dr. Although the legality of PAS largely depends on the attitude of the respective state government, one could argue that the banning of physician-assisted suicide violates the Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment because the choice to end one’s life during unceasing pain-especially when one’s death is imminent- should be included in one’s right to life. Each state has different criteria for PAS, but all three require that the patient be cognitively competent, terminally ill, and can provide witnesses for their request for PAS. Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in Oregon, Washington, and Montana, where physicians can lawfully provide life-ending medication upon the request of a patient. While the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment is legal, PAS is illegal in most states because it is considered affirmative aid, which leaves physicians subject to criminal liability. This difference makes PAS particularly controversial. Physician-assisted suicide differs from euthanasia in the sense that, in PAS, the physician does not themselves carry out the life-ending task, but instead provide the medication by which a patient can end their life. Such practices include passive euthanasia, assisted dying, active euthanasia, and most recently, physician-assisted suicide. It also includes suicide, which is done without the assistance of a physician, as well as other practices that are done with the guidance of a physician. The “right to die” covers more than just “pulling the plug” on life-sustaining treatment. For decades, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and the right to die have been at the center of numerous legal battles.
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