THE US Supreme Court will hear final arguments this week on whether doctor assisted suicide is to become legal. The Northern Territory in Australia recently legalised, euthanasia (although the law is being challenged in the courts) and the practice is increasingly common in the Netherlands.
Regarded as one of the US court's most important decisions the issue is being decided because Dr Jack Kevorkian, nicknamed "Dr Death", has assisted in about 50 reported suicides. In doing so he has defied state laws forbidding such assistance. He has been prosecuted but acquitted on several occasions after juries have been shown videos of patients asking to be given lethal drugs to end their sufferings.
In most states, assisting a person to commit suicide is a crime but this ban has been challenged in Washington and New York. The appeal courts in both states have ruled against the ban, saying it is contrary to individual rights in the US constitution. But the cases were then brought to the Supreme Court which will hear,the oral submissions from both sides on Wednesday.
Opinion on euthanasia is deeply divided where terminally ill patients are concerned. There is concern that if it is legalised, health cost considerations will come to play an increasing role in life or death decisions. Severely disabled persons also fear that they will be put under increasing pressure to commit suicide.
Dr Kevorkian has also been accused of encouraging persons to commit suicide who were not as ill as they were told, as subsequent autopsies showed.
The American Medical Association is opposed to legalising euthanasia as a breach of the Hippocratic oath, but polls among doctors and nurses have shown that many are prepared to hasten death in certain cases. The US administration officially opposes assisted suicide.
One of the main arguments the court will hear in favour of doctor assisted suicide is based on the equal rights amendment to the constitution. The court has already ruled in favour of persons in a vegetative state being removed from life support systems. It is argued that after this it would be a "discrimination against persons not on such systems if they were, refused their wish to die.
The court's various rulings in favour of a woman's right to abortion are also being argued as precedents in favour of the "right to die".
Under a heading "Every Doctor a Kevorkian?", the Washington Post said in an editorial yesterday "that the Supreme Court's decision "surely will be one of the most important of the decade". It will affect millions of families and "liked abortion, the issue is fraught with ethical, moral and religious questions". The newspaper argues against the involvement of doctors in the suicide option.
. A terminally ill Australian woman became the second person to commit suicide under the world's first voluntary euthanasia law, declaring "peace at last" as she received a fatal dose of drugs via a computer programme.
Ms Janet Mills (52), who was suffering from a rare form of skin cancer, took her life last Thursday, euthanasia campaigners said yesterday.