Last updated on: 12/16/2022 | Author: ProCon.org

Did You Know?

1. In classical Athens, city magistrates kept a supply of poison for anyone who wished to die.
2. Jack Kevorkian, MD, the pathologist sentenced on Apr. 13, 1999 to 10-25 years in prison for his role in the euthanasia of Thomas Youk was paroled on June 1, 2007 after serving 8 years.
3. All 50 states and the District of Columbia prohibit euthanasia under general homicide laws.
4. MAID is legal in several US states and DC.
5. On Jan. 17, 2006, in Gonzales v. Oregon, the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold the ability of physicians to prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances to terminally ill patients.
Click for the Encyclopaedia Britannica video about Diane Pretty, a British woman who unsuccessfully petitioned the European Court of Human Rights in 2002 for the right to assisted suicide
6. The earliest American statute to explicitly outlaw assisted suicide was enacted in New York on Dec. 10, 1828.
7. On Nov. 5, 2008, Washington became the second US state to legalize MAID after voters approved a ballot initiative (59% to 41%) to implement the Washington Death with Dignity Act.
8. Euthanasia is legal in several countries worldwide including: Belgium, Colombia, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
9. On Dec. 5, 2008, Montana district judge Dorothy McCarter made Montana the third state with legal MAID with her ruling in the case of Baxter v. Montana.
10. The original text of the ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath, written sometime between 460 and 380 BC, contained prohibitions against surgery, abortion, and euthanasia. It is still taken (in some form) by many medical school graduates.