Elder Law: Counseling Clients Who Are Terminally Ill

Pump house boilers and crane oil tanks. Date is in the 1920s.Honecker, V

In the Laboratory of the States: The Progress of \u3cem\u3eGlucksberg\u3c/em\u3e\u27s Invitation to States to Address End-of-Life Choice

It has now been ten years since the Supreme Court handed down Glucksberg and Quill, rulings on laws that forbid assisted suicide. In that time, normative and legal developments in the fields of law, medicine, and psychology have changed the landscape of the discourse on the choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill individual to choose to self-administer medications to bring about a peaceful death. Although the Court rejected petitioners\u27 claims that state laws denying them the ability to end their terminal illnesses through self-administered medication violated the Constitution, it left states with the opportunity to experiment with legislation that would allow terminally ill individuals the choices they had previously sought through litigation. Oregon\u27s experience with its Death with Dignity Act, which grants terminally ill, mentally competent individuals the choice to end their lives through self-administered medication, has proven that such laws provide comfort not only to those who, faced with the prospect of a horrible death from a terminal illness, choose to end their lives in a peaceful and dignified manner, but also to those to ultimately choose not to. Additionally, Oregon\u27s experience shows that the fears that originally attended the assisted suicide debate are unfounded so long as proper procedures are in place. Because Oregon\u27s Death with Dignity Act has proven both useful and harmless, this Article concludes that it is time for other states to follow Oregon\u27s lead and enact their own legislation to allow their citizens an alternative to what otherwise could be a prolonged and painful death from terminal illness

Surrogate End of Life Decisionmaking: The Importance of Providing Procedural Due Process, a Case Review

In a hospital in the State of Washington, at the direction of family-member surrogates, the feeding tube was withdrawn from a resident patient. The patient had no advance directive or living will, nor had he expressed the desire (previously or contemporaneously) for withdrawal of life support. He had not been diagnosed as terminally ill or permanently unconscious. In fact, there was evidence that the patient had some cognitive function, desired to continue living, and desired continued life support. This evidence was presented to his caregivers immediately after the patient was advised of the withdrawal, yet life support was not resumed until five days later, and only after a court so ordered. What happened to this patient raises fundamental questions about the procedures to be followed before life support is withdrawn from a patient who has not made an advance directive, the safeguards for ascertaining a patient\u27s condition and wishes, and the situations in which a surrogate may direct life-support removal. May hospitals and doctors terminate life support at the direction of a surrogate without assurance that the patient (a) is terminally ill or permanently unconscious, and (b) cannot make and express his or her own decision whether to live or die? Are procedural safeguards defined solely by hospitals\u27 and doctors\u27 standards of care, or must they include standards articulated by the state\u27s highest court

Privacy and Dignity at the End of LIfe: Protecting the Right of Montans to Choose Aid in Dying

Privacy and Dignity at the End of LIf

Physician Aid in Dying: A Humane Option, a Constitutionally Protected Choice

This Article presents the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the individual decision to hasten death with physician-prescribed medication and that statutes prohibiting physician-assisted suicide deny equal protection, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, to competent, terminally-ill adults who are not on life support