It's legal only in the state of Oregon, and has been only since late 1997. A few other states are making efforts to legalize assisted suicide. But soon Congress may put a stop to it everywhere. Death is a compassionate way to relieve unbearable suffering. Legal or not, assisted suicides occur, and it would be better if they were brought into the open.
Assisted suicide has great potential for abuse.
People without family support or adequate finances, as well as the depressed, could be pressured to choose death. Physicians can be wrong about estimating how much time a patient has left, causing unnecessary deaths. The public will lose its confidence in the medical profession if physicians get into the business of helping people kill themselves. An age-old debate Physicians have been divided over the issue of assisted suicide since the birth of Western medicine some 2,000 years ago. The oath was written at a time when physicians commonly provided euthanasia and assisted suicide for ailments ranging from foot infections and gallstones to cancer and senility.