A growing number of countries have enacted legislation permitting and regulating physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. And addressing two large remaining questions, as Canada will do, could enlarge the scope of eligibility.
MELBOURNE – The right to assistance in dying continues to gain ground. Last month, the Spanish parliament passed legislation, expected to come into effect in June, permitting doctors to assist adult patients to die if they have a “serious and incurable” disease that causes “unbearable suffering.” The doctor may either prescribe a lethal dose of a drug that patients can take themselves – a mode known by various terms, including medical aid in dying, voluntary assisted dying, and physician-assisted suicide – or give the patient a lethal injection, known as voluntary euthanasia.
MELBOURNE – The right to assistance in dying continues to gain ground. Last month, the Spanish parliament passed legislation, expected to come into effect in June, permitting doctors to assist adult patients to die if they have a “serious and incurable” disease that causes “unbearable suffering.” The doctor may either prescribe a lethal dose of a drug that patients can take themselves – a mode known by various terms, including medical aid in dying, voluntary assisted dying, and physician-assisted suicide – or give the patient a lethal injection, known as voluntary euthanasia.