Ball - The Right to Die: a Reference Handbook

The Right to Die

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CONTEMPORARY WORLD ISSUES

Copyright 2017 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ball, Howard, 1937 author.
Title: The right to die : a reference handbook / Howard Ball.
Description: Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, LLC,
[2017] | Series: Contemporary world issues | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042041 (print) | LCCN 2016045321
(ebook) | ISBN 9781440843112 (alk. paper) | ISBN
9781440843129 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Right to dieUnited States. | Euthanasia
United States.
Classification: LCC R726 .B255 2017 (print) | LCC R726
(ebook) | DDC 179.7dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042041

ISBN: 978-1-4408-4311-2

EISBN: 978-1-4408-4312-9

212019181712345

This book is also available as an eBook.

ABC-CLIO

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ABC-CLIO, LLC

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Santa Barbara, California 931161911

www.abc-clio.com

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

For two persons who keep me from going off the rails:
Michael Bukanc and Jeffrey Rubman.

If we allow medicine to prolong life, should we also allow it to shorten life for the terminally ill?

Nora Zamichow and Ken Murray, 2014

It is necessary that [advocates on both sides] will need to work together and listen more closely to [each others] concerns about end-of-life cases.

Alicia Ouellette, 2013

Whatever the limits and travails we face, we want to retain the autonomythe freedomto be the authors of our lives. This is the very marrow of being human.

Atul Gawande, 2014

Not one of us decided the time or manner in which we come into the world. Our life is a sacred gift from God, and only He can give it. It is therefore His right alone to take us out of the world.

Father Frank A. Pavone, 2014

The Right to Die: A Reference Handbook examines the issue as it has evolved over the past century, giving prominence to the last 50 years because of these decades impact on how we die due to the exponential acceleration of scientific research and medical technological breakthroughs. As a result, Americans have been living much longer and, due to changes in how the medical community responds to accidents and illness, dying much more slowly and, frequently, in great pain. It is an examination that considers how these scientific-technological-medical advances impact the dying process.

examines the beliefs, values, and fears of all the participants in these ongoing ethical, medical, social, legal, and political battles about how we live and if and how we can determine how we will die. At its core, this book is about the hardnosed battles between those who believe that a person has a constitutionally protected liberty to die with the assistance of a physician and their opponents, who maintain that a host of ethical, religious, legal, and medical principles bar such medical aid to help a terminally ill patient to die.

The first chapter examines these battles from these two ardently opposed positions, providing readers with a clear understanding of the reasons for such profound disagreements. It will also provide the reader with the historical context within which are located the roots of this contentious issue in the 21st century.

underlines the importance of constitutional rights and liberties in the nations history, especially the ways in which fundamental human rights have been expanded through interpretations of the idea of liberty found in the U.S. and state constitutions. It took judicial decisions, legislative enactments, and presidential powers to enlarge the scope of liberty to include blacks, women, ethnic and religious minorities, the poor, and the gay and lesbian communities. The Civil War amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth, added in 1865, 1866, and 1868); the Nineteenth Amendment (1919); the Civil (1964) and Voting (1965) Rights Acts; and U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the areas of womens rights, marital privacy, marriage, and free speech are but a few examples of how the Constitution has evolved over two-plus centuries to expand the meaning of individual rights and liberties.

The clashes surrounding whether there is a right to die protected by the Constitution and by laws passed by government are discussed in general terms in . Democracy works, in great part, because of these figurative battles between opposing groups over how we live and die. Votes, not bullets, determine the outcome of such battles. But it is an outcome that will be challengedagain and againby the losers. That is the core of a democracy. On any issue of public concern, groupsreligious, social, economic, professional, political, and moralare created to push for rights allegedly denied them.