Abstract

In recent years, Oregon and Washington have enacted so-called Death with Dignity (DWD) statutes that permit patients whose doctors certify that they have less than six months to live to commit suicide with the aid of a physician.1 The laws allow a doctor, upon the patient’s request, to prescribe a lethal dosage of drugs, which the patient then self-administers.2 Oregon’s law went into effect in 1997, and over five hundred terminal patients have ended their lives pursuant to it since then (Oregon Public Health Division 2011).3 Washington’s law took effect in March of 2009, and by the end of 2010, some 87 terminally ill citizens of that state had brought their lives to a close with the permission of the law ..