Ethical and legal issues concerning physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are very much on the public agenda in many jurisdictions. In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process. His ethical conclusion is that a bright line between assisted death and other widely accepted end-of-life practices, including the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, pain control through high-dose opioids, and terminal sedation, cannot be justified. In the course of the ethical argument many familiar themes are given careful and thorough treatment: conceptions of death, the badness of death, the wrongness of killing, informed consent and refusal, the ethics of suicide, cause of death, the double effect, the sanctity of life, the "active/passive" distinction, advance directives, and nonvoluntary euthanasia. The legal discussion opens with a survey of some prominent prohibitionist and regulatory regimes and then outlines a model regulatory policy for assisted death. Sumner concludes by defending this policy against a wide range of common objections, including those which appeal to slippery slopes or the possibility of abuse, and by asking how the transition to a regulatory regime might be managed in three common law prohibitionist jurisdictions.

The question of whether euthanasia and assisted suicide should be legalized is often treated, by judges and commentators alike, as a universal, ethical question, transcending national boundaries and diverse legal systems. By thinking of the issue in this way, the important context in which individual jurisdictions make decisions about assisted dying and the significance of the legal methods chosen to carry out those decisions is often lost. This book examines the impact of the choice of diverse legal routes towards legalization on the subsequent assisted dying regimes in operation. This examination suggests that greater caution is needed before relying on the experience of one jurisdiction when discussing proposals for regulation of assisted dying in others. The book seeks to demonstrate the need to explore the legal environment in which assisted dying is performed or proposed in order to evaluate the relevance of a particular legal experience to other jurisdictions. The book begins with an examination of the unsuccessful attempts to use constitutionally entrenched human rights claims to challenge criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide which reached the highest courts in the United States, Canada and Europe. Their failure makes legalization through a rights-based claim unlikely in any major common law or European jurisdiction. Alternative routes towards legalization are then discussed, including the defence of necessity, by which euthanasia was effectively legalized in the Netherlands and an approach based on compassion which has been proposed in France, as well as the legislative approaches which have been taken in Oregon, Belgium and the Northern Territory of Australia. All of these approaches are compared in detail, with particular attention paid to the effectiveness and transferability of the ubiquitous slippery slope arguments

Wahrend in Deutschland die aktive Sterbehilfe" nach wie vor strafbar sein soll, werden in der Politik Uberlegungen angestellt, die passive Sterbehilfe" straffrei zu machen. Auch die Anderung des Betreuungsrechts steht in diesem Zusammenhang zur Diskussion. Vorsorgevollmacht und Patientenverfugung sind hier die zentralen Begriffe, mit denen argumentiert wird. Ethische, soziologische, rechtliche und medizinische Betrachtungen laden den Leser ein, sich einen umfassenden Uberblick uber das Tabuthema im Wandel?" zu verschaffen."

Voluntary Euthanasia investigates the complex and controversial issue of active voluntary euthanasia, presenting the legal position in a clear, comprehensive fashion. It critically examines the criminal law prohibition of medically administered active voluntary euthanasia in common law jurisdictions and looks at the situation in practice. The evidence of patient demands for active euthanasia and the willingness of some doctors to respond to patients requests is explored, and an argument for reform of the law is made with reference to the position in the Netherlands where active voluntary euthanasia is now openly practised.

Whether euthanasia or assisted suicide should be legalized is one of the most pressing and profound questions facing legislators, health care professionals, their patients, and all members of society. Regrettably, the debate is too often characterized by rhetoric rather than reason. This book aims to inform the debate by acquainting anyone interested in this vital question with some of the major ethical, legal, clinical and theological issues involved. The essays it contains are authoritative in that they have been commissioned from some of the world's leading experts, balanced in that they reflect divergent viewpoints (including a vigorous debate between two eminent philosophers), and readable in that they should be readily understood by the general reader.

"Shai Lavi has enormously deepened the current argument over euthanasia by putting it in a perspective that has seldom entered the discussion, namely, its history. The genealogy of the idea and practices that have turned the art of dying into the technique of dying does not solve the current debate, but it does allow us to see it not just as an argument between ethicists, but as one about the cultural meaning of death. This book is essential for anyone who is concerned about euthanasia and has the potential of changing the very terms of the discussion."--Robert N. Bellah, University of California, Berkeley, coauthor of "Habits of the Heart and The Good Society,"

"This book presents a subtle, nuanced investigation of the practice of euthanasia. It is a thoroughly researched study, relying on a variety of primary sources as well as keen historical instincts to tell a compelling, textured, and insightful story."--Gary Laderman, Emory College

"How do we die? What do our ways of dying tell us about who we are and what kind of society we live in? Using the controversy over euthanasia to address these questions, Shai Lavi has written a theoretically sophisticated and persuasive book. Deftly combining historical argument and legal analysis, "The Modern Art of Dying" speaks to important ethical issues with great sensitivity and unusual subtlety. It exemplifies the best in interdisciplinary scholarship."--Austin Sarat, Amherst College, author of the forthcoming "Mercy on Trial" (Princeton)

"This is an outstanding book-beautifully crafted, extremely thoughtful, exceptionally well-organized and argued, and highly original. It's an important story and Lavi has organized it in a compelling, highly readable manner."--Sharon Kaufman, University of California, San Francisco.

"Shai Lavi has written a timely, insightful, and valuable book. Even those who have agitated for or against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide rarely know the long history behind our current arguments. He does the necessary and invaluable work of a sociologist and historian: showing us the roots of our present debates. We are deeply influenced by them to this day."--Daniel Callahan, Director of International Programs, The Hastings Center

The coronavirus pandemic has made society's relationship with death and dying everybody's business. We have had to confront new challenges around the way we care for dying people, yet the old problems have not gone away. In February 2018, Dennis Eccleston, suffering in agony from terminal cancer, took an overdose of pain medication to end his own life, helped by his wife Mavis. Mavis was charged with murder. The turmoil that followed sheds light on the brutal impact of the UK's failure to legalise assisted dying. Sarah Wootton and Lloyd Riley of the campaign group Dignity in Dying argue that our laws and culture governing death and dying need radical reform and present a vision of what dying in the twenty-first century should look like. From votes for women to equal marriage, campaigners have had to fight for rights that now seem sacrosanct. As the pandemic now forces us to re-examine how we die, Wootton and Riley show how choice at the end of life is a right whose time has come. Bringing to light the heart-breaking testimony of those who have witnessed unimaginable suffering at the end of life and exposing the hypocrisy of the arguments put forward to oppose progress, Last Rights questions how future generations will judge us if we fail to take action and issues a call to arms for people to unlock their power and demand change.

This book argues against the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide on the ground that, even if they were ethically defensible in certain 'hard cases', neither could be effectively controlled by law. It maintains that the experience of legalisation in the Netherlands, Belgium and Oregon lends support to the two 'slippery slope' arguments against legalisation, the 'empirical' and the 'logical'. The empirical argument challenges the feasibility of drafting and enforcing adequate safeguards against abuse and mistake; the logical argument shows that acceptance of the case for euthanasia in the case of suffering patients who request it logically involves acceptance of euthanasia for suffering patients who are unable to request it, such as infants and those with advanced dementia.

Euthanasia has become increasingly contentious as populations age, and medical and scientific advances continue to transform and extend life. Euthanasia - Choice and Death examines the key philosophical arguments that have underpinned thinking and practice up till now: The centrality of choice to our notion of the human being; The challenge of changes to our concept of death in the face of medical, scientific and technological advances. Gail Tulloch develops a conception of dignity that does not depend on religious assumptions and can promote a broad ethical consensus in a liberal democracy. Examination of landmark cases and the approaches adopted by key countries - the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia - ground the book.

Marie Fleming became a household name in Ireland with her trail-blazing campaign for the right to die with dignity, when she took a landmark case against the Irish State to lift the ban on assisted suicide. But behind the Multiple Sclerosis sufferer's brave fight lay a remarkable life story known to few. From her young years growing up in Donegal, as she struggled to keep her family together after her mother left, to her battle to keep her own baby - born when Marie was still a teenager - to her later quest for education and self-betterment against the odds, An Act of Love is an unforgettable story of ambition, of sorrow, and of life lived to the full. In it, she also describes coming to terms with MS and the ordeal of her later court case. Completed just before Marie's death in late 2013, most of all, this is a story of the power of abiding love.

In court cases, policy studies and media stories, euthanasia advocates claim that Belgium's euthanasia records are complete and transparent. The official euthanasia story from Belgium has been accepted at face value by the authors of these influential reports and court decisions; the Royal Society of Canada End-of-Life Decision Making report; the Quebec Select Committee on Dying with Dignity report; the Commission on Assisted Dying report - UK the BC Supreme Court Justice Lynn Smith: Carter decision.

A dazzling and darkly comic memoir about coming of age in a black funeral home in Baltimore
Sheri Booker was only fifteen when she started working at Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore. She had no idea her summer job would become nine years of immersion into a hidden world. Reeling from the death of her beloved great aunt, Sheri found comfort in the funeral home and soon had the run of the place. With AIDS and gang violence threatening to wipe out a generation of black men, Wylie was never short on business.
As families came together to bury one of their own, Booker was privy to their most intimate moments of grief and despair. But along with the sadness, Booker encountered moments of dark humor: brawls between mistresses and widows, and car crashes at McDonald's with dead bodies in tow. While she never got over her terror of the embalming room, Booker learned to expect the unexpected and to never, ever cry. "Nine Years Under" offers readers an unbelievable glimpse into an industry in the backdrop of all our lives.

In this new addition to the Debating Law series, Emily Jackson and John Keown re-examine the legal and ethical parameters of the debate about euthanasia and assistance-in-death. Emily Jackson argues that we owe it to everyone in society to do all that we can to ensure that terminally-ill patients experience a 'good death.' For a small minority of patients who experience intolerable and unrelievable suffering, this may mean helping them to have an assisted death. In a liberal society, where people's moral views differ, we should not force individuals to experience death in an unbearable manner. This is not an argument in favor of dying. On the contrary, Jackson argues that legalization could extend and enhance the lives of people whose present fear-of-the-dying process causes them overwhelming distress. In contrast, John Keown argues that voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are gravely unethical, and he defends their continued prohibition by law. Keown analyzes the main arguments for relaxation of the law - including those which invoke the experience in jurisdictions that permit these practices - and finds them wanting. Relaxing the law, he concludes, would be both wrong in principle and dangerous in practice, not least for the dying, the disabled, and the disadvantaged. Debating Euthanasia will be an excellent resource for provoking classroom discussion and is a useful introduction to the subject. It covers a highly topical subject and will be of interest to a wide readership, including medical lawyers, legal philosophers, and criminal lawyers. The clear and accessible style also makes it suitable for the lay reader who is interested in the debate surrounding euthanasia. (Series: Debating Law - Vol. 3)

A husband and wife are gravely ill. Rather than living in pain, they choose to end their lives, and they turn to their son for help. Despite the legal risks and emotional turmoil it is sure to cause him, he agrees--and ultimately performs an act of love more difficult than any other. The Last Goodnights provides a unique and unflinching look deep inside the reality of one of the most galvanizing issues of our time: assisted suicide. Told with bare honesty, John West's account of the deaths of two brave people is both gritty and loving, frightening and illuminating. It also offers a powerful testament to the act of death by choice, and reveals all the reasons why end-of-life issues are far too personal for government intrusion. Intimately told, The Last Goodnights points out the unnecessary pain and suffering that are often forced upon dying people and their families, and honors the choice to live or die with purpose and dignity. In the end, this story is not just about death--it is also about love, courage, and autonomy.

Michael J. Hyde's pathbreaking study considers the relationship between the phenomenon of conscience and the practice of rhetoric as it relates to one of the most controversial issues of our time-euthanasia. Hyde investigates how the practice of rhetoric becomes a voice of conscience and influences the moral standards of individuals and communities. In doing so, he offers the first extensive treatment of Martin Heidegger's and Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical investigations of conscience and an in-depth analysis of the justifiability and social acceptability of euthanasia. Hyde establishes the theoretical basis of his study by discussing and critically assessing the phenomenological theories of conscience set forth in the works of the two philosophers. To illustrate in concrete terms how the relationship between the call of conscience and the practice of rhetoric shows itself in everyday existence, Hyde surveys the moral discourse that informs ongoing debates over euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. He focuses on a cluster of related topics that emerge from his discussion of the work of Heidegger and Levinas, including the phenomena of deconstruction and acknowledgment, emotion and the reconstructive power of language, and the discursive creation of heroes. Through these investigations Hyde accounts for some of the key definitions, arguments, and narratives that contribute to the rhetoric of the euthanasia debate, especially as the discussion has evolved since the late 1980s.

After the Nancy Cruzan case was decided by the Supreme Court in 1990, and ultimately resolved by the Courts of the State of Missouri, the decision to withhold or withdraw life-prolonging nutrition and hydration appeared to many to be as noncontroversial as decisions to refuse respirators or dialysis. Even the Catholic Church held that, although there should be a presumption in favor of providing nutrition and hydration, the patient or the patient's surrogate could overrule this presumption, if either believed the treatment was disproportionate or burdensome. The Schiavo case changed all that. Although the decision to remove Terri Schiavo's nutrition and hydration was made by her husband - her legal surrogate - based on his wife's belief that such treatment was disproportionate, Schiavo's immediate family protested so much that the case took years to resolve. It eventually involved all branches of government at both the state and federal levels. The ethical dilemmas that such cases pose continue to stir great controversy. This in-depth examination of these dilemmas provides information and documentation from many perspectives. The editors have included a foreword by Dr. Jay Wolfson, Terri Schiavo's court-appointed guardian ad litem, as well as Dr. Wolfson's report to Gov. Jeb Bush on the case and Gov. Bush's reply; public statements by President George Bush and Senators David Weldon, Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and Barney Frank; statements by the pope and other representatives of the Catholic Church on this issue; plus much medical and legal background material on both precedents to the Schiavo case and its aftermath, including the results of the autopsy report. For anyone wishing an in-depth understanding of these complex ethical issues, issues many of us will have to confront in our own families, this volume is indispensable.

Controversy about the morality of euthanasia and assisted suicide and their legalisation has been running for over a generation, and it shows no sign of flagging. The main arguments for and against are widely familiar, yet the horizon yields no sign of any approaching resolution. Progress can still be made by careful examination of the opposing fronts and that is the service that this book performs. Drawing ecumenically on both theological and philosophical resources, it pioneers an original way to a mature judgement by tackling the three basic questions that the debate raises: What is it that makes human life valuable? Can it ever be moral to intend to kill someone? And how much should we fear the wider, social effects of legalising euthanasia or assisted suicide?

There are few issues more divisive than what has become known as "the right to die." One camp upholds "death with dignity," regarding the terminally ill as autonomous beings capable of forming their own judgment on the timing and process of dying. The other camp advocates "sanctity of life," regarding life as intrinsically valuable, and believes that it should be sustained for as long as possible. Is there a right answer? Raphael Cohen-Almagor takes a balanced approach in analyzing this emotionally charged debate, viewing the dispute from public policy and international perspectives. His study is an interdisciplinary, compelling study in medicine, law, religion, and ethics. With a comprehensive look at the troubling question of whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed, Cohen-Almagor delineates a distinction between active and passive euthanasia and discusses legal measures that have been invoked in the United States and abroad. He outlines reasons why nonblood relatives should be given a role in deciding a patient's last wishes. As he examines euthanasia policies in the Netherlands and the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the author suggests amendments and finally makes a circumscribed plea for voluntary physician-assisted suicide. Raphael Cohen-Almagor has been the Fulbright-Yitzhak Rabin Scholar and a visiting professor at UCLA School of Law and department of communication. He is chairperson of library and information studies at the University of Haifa, and the author of The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance, Speech, Media and Ethics: The Limits of Free Expression, and Euthanasia in the Netherlands.

This book is written for all those who are concerned about how their life may end-and who wish to die without unnecessary suffering. Dr. Charles F. McKhann discusses many aspects of physician-assisted dying and explains why he thinks it should be made legally available under certain circumstances. Dr. McKhann, a specialist in cancer surgery, has conducted in-depth interviews with people who were dying from a variety of illnesses and with the physicians who cared for them. Drawing on these interviews and on his own experiences as a physician, he looks at the dying process as it is encountered in painful and debilitating diseases and at the needs of patients and their families. Dr. McKhann presents the case for rational suicide, comparing a failed suicide attempt in the United States with a planned death in the Netherlands and illustrating the differences in approach and attitudes. He explains the ways in which physician assistance is already taking place and considers the physician`s personal and professional concerns. And he reflects on relevant religious, moral, legal, and public-policy issues that are currently so widely debated. His thought-provoking book is a valuable resource not only for the general public but also for compassionate physicians who attend people with fatal diseases and for lawmakers who strive for understanding and courage in dealing with this new challenge.

The issue of physician-assisted death is now firmly on the American public agenda. Already legal in five states, it is the subject of intense public opinion battles across the country. Driven by an increasingly aging population, and a baby boom generation just starting to enter its senior years, the issue is not going to go away anytime soon. In Physician-Assited Death L.W. Sumner equips readers with everything they need to know to take a reasoned and informed position in this important debate. The book provides needed context for the debate by situating physician-assisted death within the wider framework of end-of-life care and explaining why the movement to legalize it now enjoys such strong public support. It also reviews that movement's successes to date, beginning in Oregon in 1994 and now extending to eleven jurisdictions across three continents. Like abortion, physician-assisted death is ethically controversial and the subject of passionately held opinions. The central chapters of the book review the main arguments utilized by both sides of the controversy: on the one hand, appeals to patient autonomy and the relief of suffering, on the other the claim that taking active steps to hasten death inevitably violates the sanctity of life. The book then explores both the case in favor of legalization and the case against, focusing in the latter instance on the risk of abuse and the possibility of slippery slopes. In this context the experience of jurisdictions that have already taken the step of legalization is carefully reviewed to see what lessons might be extracted from it. It then identifies some further issues that lie beyond the boundaries of the current debate but will have to be faced sometime down the road: euthanasia for patients who are permanently unconscious or have become seriously demented and for severely compromised newborns. The book concludes by considering the various possible routes to legalization, both political and judicial. Readers will then be prepared to decide for themselves just where they stand when they confront the issue both in their own jurisdiction and in their own lives.

In 1974 the Church of England published a groundbreaking report on euthanasia. Considered by many Christians to be one of the key texts on the subject, it has now been revised and updated with important new additions and commentaries. On Dying Well investigates moral, theological, clinical and legal arguments for and against voluntary euthanasia. It presents arguments on both sides and considers real cases, thereby locating the issues in their clinical context. The report is both intellectually robust and sensitive to the realities of death. On Dying Well is, therefore, as much a contribution to the debate on euthanasia today as it was 25 years ago. The report, while recognising that there may be exceptional cases demanding special decisions, nevertheless concludes that the case for legalising voluntary euthanasia is not one that can be supported. The conclusions are satisfactory because they emerge from careful examination of the issues and reasoned arguments. Anyone who is concerned about euthanasia, or who would like to deepen their own reflections on the subject, should read On Dying Well.