Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is being considered by legislatures in 17 states: Alaska, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wisconsin. Most of the bills are based on Oregon’s Death with Dignity law.
2017 legislation to legalize PAS was considered but has failed or is considered fatally stalled in nine states: Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
There is no pending PAS legislation in Ohio, though State Senator Chaleta Tavares has indicated she will introduce a bill this year. The senator stated, “I want people to have an expiration that meets their physical needs, their spiritual needs and their families’ needs… If they don’t want to continue life, because of their pain, that should be their decision and their right to make it. It would help stop a lot of these horrible deaths we see where people end life with violent means, and that’s so hard on the families.”
The US Conference on Catholic Bishops, an organization actively opposing PAS bills in many states, stated, “A choice to take one’s life is a supreme contradiction of freedom, a choice to eliminate all choices… And a society that devalues some people’s lives, by hastening and facilitating their deaths, will ultimately lose respect for their other rights and freedoms.”
According to a May 2016 Gallup poll, 69% of Americans believed euthanasia should be legal in the United States, 51% said they “would consider ending their lives if faced with terminal illness,” and 53% said that physician-assisted suicide is morally acceptable. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in DC and six US states: California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
(via Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide Considered in 17 States - ProCon.org)
Source: procon.org
