Court Opinion

ID: 9568852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:08:02.382028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:10:17.274439
License: Public Domain

Mallett, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). Because the lead opinion would find that there is no constitutional right, in any situation, to hasten one’s death through physician-prescribed medications, I dissent. I agree with part iv of the lead opinion that the assisted suicide act does not violate the Title-Object Clause of the Michigan Constitution. I also agree with part vi of the lead opinion’s finding, modifying the common-law definition of murder and recognizing assisting suicide *525as a qommon-law offense, and further agree that if the required elements of assisting suicide are presented to an examining magistrate under the saving clause, MCL 750.505; MSA 28.773, the defendant shall be bound over for criminal prosecution. I recognize that under part vi, the defendant in this case may possibly be prosecuted for murder. Confronted with the record presented to this Court, I would find it hard to believe that an examining magistrate could determine that the defendant here was more than merely involved in the events leading up to the commission of the final overt act and thus chargeable or prosecutable for any crime other than assisting suicide. Central to the lead opinion’s position are the statements made and the legal conclusions reached in part v. The following pages contain the reasons for my dissent.
There are strong arguments based on moral principles on both sides of this issue, and this Court should be wary of accepting arguments based solely on moral principles. As the United States Supreme Court stated in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey, 505 US 833, —; 112 S Ct 2791, 2806; 120 L Ed 2d 674 (1992), "[o]ur obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” Defining liberty, therefore, cannot involve a morality play by any group or by a general disapproval by the majority of this Court. The liberty to end one’s suffering during a terminal illness exists as shown by the decisions in Cruzan v Director, Missouri Dep’t of Health, 497 US 261; 110 S Ct 2841; 111 L Ed 2d 224 (1990), In re Quinlan, 70 NJ 10; 355 A2d 647 (1976), cert den sub nom Garger v New Jersey, 429 US 922 (1976), and Compassion in Dying v Washington, 850 F Supp 1454 (WD Wash, 1994). It exists without the approval of a significant consti*526tuency and is no less deserving of recognition, than is abortion. Furthermore, I agree with the court in Compassion in Dying, that, in some respects, the right to physician-assisted suicide may be easier to recognize because there is no competing life interest assertable by the state.
I. THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
The rights conferred under the substantive portion of the Due Process Clause have been developing for over one hundred years. Mugler v Kansas, 123 US 623; 8 S Ct 273; 31 L Ed 205 (1887). As pointed out in Planned Parenthood v Casey, 112 S Ct 2804, the Due Process Clause contains "a substantive component as well, one 'barring certain government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them,’ ” quoting Daniels v Williams, 474 US 327, 331; 106 S Ct 662; 88 L Ed 2d 662 (1986).1
The constitutional claim presented here falls squarely within the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that maintains that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or *527property, without due process of law . . . As in the abortion cases, the governing word in this case is "liberty.”
The joint opinion of Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, in reaffirming a woman’s right to receive an abortion, recognized that such cases are at "an intersection of two lines of decisions . . . .” Casey, 112 S Ct 2810. These cases may be viewed as either "an exemplar of Griswold liberty” or examples of "personal autonomy and bodily integrity . . . .” Id., 112 S Ct 2810, citing Cruzan, supra at 278.2 Whether physician-assisted suicide is characterized .as a liberty right or a privacy right, the proper constitutional analysis is found in Casey and the right to die cases.
The lead opinion and the various amici curiae in this case contend that liberty interests exist only where conduct is " 'deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ ” or " 'implicit in the concept of order liberty’ . . . .” See Bowers v Hardwick, 478 US 186, 191-192; 106 S Ct 2841; 92 L Ed 2d 140 (1986), quoting Palko v Connecticut, 302 US 319, 325-326; 58 S Ct 149; 82 L Ed 288 (1937), and Moore v East Cleveland, Ohio, 431 US 494, 503; 97 *528S Ct 1932; 52 L Ed 2d 531 (1977). They argue that because there is a common background making suicide and assisted suicide crimes, physician-assisted suicide cannot be a fundamental right. They also argue that such a right cannot be found anywhere in the constitution or its amendments. However, to recognize only fundamental rights according to such a test is unsuitable for the vast and fast-moving progressions of the modern world. Earlier laws or traditions are not the "source” of liberty or privacy interests. If this were so, our nation’s Supreme Court would have been unable to recognize the rights that many of us now understand to be inherent in our very being.3 As Justice *529Stevens stated in Meachum v Fano, 427 US 215, 230; 96 S Ct 2532; 49 L Ed 2d 451 (1976):
[NJeither the Bill of Rights nor the laws of sovereign States create the liberty which the Due Process Clause protects. The relevant constitutional provisions are limitations on the power of the sovereign to infringe on the liberty of the citizen. The relevant state laws either create property rights, or they curtail the freedom of the citizen who must live in an ordered society. Of course, law is essential to the exercise and enjoyment of individual liberty in a complex society. But it is not the source of liberty, and surely not the exclusive source. [Emphasis added.]
Following the lead opinion’s logic to its conclusion, fundamental rights would only arise if *530backed by a significant constituency. " 'The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. . . . [Fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections! . . .’ ” Tribe, Constitutional Law (2d ed), p 1351, quoting West Virginia Bd of Ed v Barnette, 319 US 624, 638; 63 S Ct 1178; 87 L Ed 1628 (1943). Moreover, if the historical analysis test is appropriate, then the holding in Roe v Wade, 410 US 113; 93 S Ct 705; 35 L Ed 2d 147 (1973), would be nothing more than an exception to the rule.4
A. THE RIGHT TO DIE
This Court should not demand that plaintiffs establish an historical right to self determine the quality of life that a terminally ill person must endure.
The lead opinion suggests that because the Cruzan Court merely "assumed” for the purposes of that case that a person has a constitutional right to refuse life-sustaining treatment such a right may not exist. Yet if this Court was squarely presented with that issue, it is doubtful that it would rule contrary to established precedent of this state and others.5
Even applying the "concept of ordered liberty” *531analysis espoused by the lead opinion, the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment can be recognized. In Washington v Harper, 494 US 210; 110 S Ct 1028; 108 L Ed 2d 178 (1990), the United States Supreme Court found that a competent person, even an inmate who suffers from psychotic episodes, has a due process liberty interest to be free from the unwanted administration of antipsychotic medications.6 Further, in the seminal case, In re Quinlan, supra at 39, the New Jersey Supreme Court explicitly recognized such a right:
We have no doubt, in these unhappy circumstances, that if Karen were herself miraculously lucid for an interval (not altering the existing prognosis of the condition to which she would soon return) and perceptive of her irreversible condition, she could effectively decide upon discontinuance of the life-support apparatus, even if it meant the prospect of natural death.
We have no hesitancy in deciding . . . that no external compelling interest of the State could compel Karen to endure the unendurable, only to vegetate a few measurable months with no realistic possibility of returning to any semblance of cognitive or sapient life.
Both Harper and Quinlan, establish that a competent person has a fundamental right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. But more importantly, Quinlan and its progeny establish that a person has a right to determine whether to continue suffering when faced with an inevitable death and that the state may not compel unwanted lifesaving treatment._
*532Moreover, other jurisdictions have recognized that the state’s interest in preserving life includes the duty to protect the right of a person not to die in a demeaning or degrading manner.7 To recognize the right asserted here is simply a logical extension of the law.8 As Justice O’Connor stated *533in Cruzan, supra at 289: "Requiring a competent adult to endure such procedures against her will burdens the patient’s liberty, dignity, and freedom to determine the course of her own treatment.”
B. PLANNED PARENTHOOD v CASEY
In Planned Parenthood v Casey, the United States Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act and whether its provisions constituted an undue burden on a woman’s right to receive an abortion. For our purposes, the most instructive aspect of Casey was its reaffirmance of the basic tenets of Roe v Wade and a woman’s fundamental right to receive an abortion.9
The opinion in Casey recognized that not all the substantive due process rights were identifiable at the time of the drafting of either the Bill of Rights or the Fourteenth Amendment. The. framers of the constitution were also aware of this fact and understood that liberty could not be summarized in a single document, no matter how extensive. Justice *534Harlan’s assertion in Poe v Ullman illustrates this principle best:
"[T]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This 'liberty’ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . and which álso recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgments.” [Casey, 112 S Ct 2805, quoting Poe v Ullman, 367 US 497, 543; 81 S Ct 1752; 6 L Ed 2d 989 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting). Emphasis added.]
Thus, determining the existence of a liberty right involves a textual examination of the constitution, an inward examination of a jurist’s beliefs, and an analysis of public inclinations.
Justice O’Connor maintained:
The inescapable fact is that adjudication of substantive due process claims may call upon the Court in interpreting the Constitution to exercise that same capacity which by tradition courts always have exercised: reasoned judgment. Its boundaries are not susceptible of expression as a simple rule. . . . "Due process has not been reduced to any formula . . . .” [Casey, 112 S Ct 2806. Emphasis added.]
Even without a formulaic approach, reasoned *535judgment coupled with guidance from the following language of Casey provides some insight regarding the existence of the right asserted here:
Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. . . . These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. [Id., 112 S Ct 2807. Emphasis added.]
In the ordinary course of existence, some decisions remain so personal in nature that society is not in a position to make judgments about their appropriateness. It is difficult to imagine a more personal or intimate choice than determining the nature or extent of one’s suffering during a terminal illness. A person’s conscience, coupled with the advice of an informed and personally chosen physician, is the appropriate decision-making method.
Therefore, under the Casey "undue burden” analysis, I believe that the statute is facially invalid because it prohibits all physician-assisted suicide. As established in the right to die cases, a person has the right to determine the extent of his suffering when faced with an inevitable death. A complete ban on physician-assisted suicide represents an "undue burden” on the right of the terminally ill to end their suffering through physician-prescribed medications. As in Casey, an infringement of a fundamental right by the state *536that completely bars the exercise of that right cannot pass constitutional muster.10
Dr. Kevorkian asks this Court to find that there is a constitutional right for a suffering person to commit suicide with the assistance of a physician. However, I do not believe that people can always make competent decisions regarding their fate while suffering because too often there are circumstances in which such decisions would be later regarded as mistakes.
Plaintiffs ask this Court to recognize that a terminally ill person has a fundamental right to hasten an inevitable death. To the extent that the plaintiff asks this Court to recognize that a terminally ill person has an absolute right to make a choice to hasten an inevitable death, I believe this swings the pendulum too far. Instead, I would conclude that a terminally ill person has such a right only if the person has made a competent *537decision and is suffering from great pain.11 Because plaintiffs are in a position to meet such a requirement, the Court ought not allow the prospect of reversal by the United States Supreme Court to inhibit the analysis of the very real constitutional claims presented by the plaintiffs. Beyond this criteria, I would hold that the state may assert its interest to preserve life as well as other established interests. Therefore, because the statute completely prohibits physician-assisted suicide, I believe that it is facially invalid.
This, of course, is not to say that the state does not have a readily identifiable interest in this area. The state has a legitimate interest in the preservation of the lives of its citizenry. However, the interests are not all-encompassing interests that would allow a blanket ban on physician-assisted suicide. "The Constitution imposes on this Court the obligation to 'examine carefully . . . the extent to which [the legitimate government interests advanced] are served by the challenged regulation.’ ” Cruzan at 303 (Brennan, J., dissenting, quoting Moore v East Cleveland, supra at 499). The interest in the preservation of life that is advanced by the state in the present case is not served by preserving the life of a person who will inevitably die and is suffering intolerable pain.
II. THE STATE’S INTEREST
While it is arguable that each of us possesses the right to commit suicide because suicide is no longer criminally punishable, such a right, if it exists, is not absolute when a third party is involved. *538Indeed, protecting the rights and interests of third parties underpins both our constitutional doctrine and criminal laws. Accordingly, I do not embrace the suggestion that because a person may have the right to commit suicide, he also has an unconditional constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. Rather, the right to physician-assisted suicide must be balanced against the countervailing interests of the state and society.
There are four main interests in this area that may be asserted by the state: (1) the preservation of life, (2) the protection of innocent third parties, (3) the prevention of suicide, and (4) the maintenance of the ethical integrity of the medical profession. In re Rosebush, 195 Mich App 675, 681; 491 NW2d 633 (1992); In re Conroy, 98 NJ 321; 486 A2d 1209 (1985); Donaldson v Lundgren, 2 Cal App 4th 1614, 1620; 4 Cal Rptr 2d 59 (1992); Cruzan at 269-271. See also anno: Judicial power to order discontinuance of life-sustaining treatment, 48 ALR4th 67. These authorities have uniformly maintained that a " 'state’s interest in the preservation of life has been held to be insufficient to outweigh the individual right where the life which would be preserved would be one in a merely vegetative state or one enduring only a prolonged process of dying ....’” Rosebush at 681, n 2. Similarly, there does not exist a sufficiently compelling justification for the infringement of the right of a competent, terminally ill person suffering from great pain to hasten death through physician-prescribed medications.
As a person’s illness progresses to the point of facing an inevitable death while suffering great pain, the state cannot put forth a sufficient rationale to completely proscribe physician-assisted suicide. In Brophy v New England Sinai Hosp, 398 Mass 417, 433; 497 NE2d 626 (1986), the Massa*539chusetts Supreme Judicial Court balanced the state’s interest in the preservation of human life against the right of self-determination and individual autonomy. The court noted that the state’s interest ordinarily involves the prolongation of human life and that that interest is "very high when 'human life [can] be saved where the affliction is curable.’ ” Quoting Superintendent of Belchertown State School v Saikewicz, 373 Mass 728, 742; 370 NE2d 417 (1977). However, the court further noted that this interest diminishes as the prognosis for recovery wanes. Brophy, 398 Mass 433. Thus, when a person is suffering from a terminal disease, the state should avoid subjective judgments concerning the quality of that person’s life.12
The state may also require that such decisions be made competently.13 Such a requirement has been fashioned by previous courts as well. In Application of President & Directors of Georgetown College, Inc, 118 US App DC 80; 331 F2d 1000 (1964), ithe court denied the right of patients to refuse lifesaving treatment for themselves in *540circumstances strongly suggesting that they lack the time or the capacity for reflection on the matter, so that the course least likely to do irreversible harm was an insistence on proceeding with treatment.
Patients have been denied the right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment where they did not have the capacity or an adequate opportunity to reflect on the finality of the decision. See, e.g., Osgood v Dist of Columbia, 567 F Supp 1026 (D DC, 1983). Additionally, the Quinlan court suggested that a person in extreme shock or pain is incapable of making a truly informed decision. 70 NJ 39, citing John F Kennedy Memorial Hosp v Heston, 58 NJ 576; 279 A2d 670 (1971).
Dr. Kevorkian’s actions are within the scope of the state’s protected interests. To the extent that a country sanctions the assisted suicide of the suffering, it does so at the risk of harm to its most vulnerable of citizens: e.g., the elderly and the clinically depressed.
Furthermore, extending the right to any suffering person making a rational decision almost begs the question. It has been widely acknowledged that most individuals who attempt suicide are suffering from depression, hopelessness, or lack of social interaction. Often such attempts are merely "cries for help.” There are also socioeconomic pressures on individuals that make them consider suicide as a means of relief. Circumstances such as grief, prejudice, oppression, or teenage stress are often the reasons cited by people attempting suicide. Marzen, O’Dowd, Crone & Balch, Suicide: A constitutional right?, 24 Duq LR1 (1985).
Therefore, the state has a right to legislate in this area. However, the state’s interests diminish as death nears for a terminally ill person; the interests are no longer sufficient to outweigh an *541individual’s right to self-determination. Such an outcome would be consistent with Compassion in Dying, supra, in which the court recognized the right of mentally competent, terminally ill adults to knowingly and voluntarily hasten their deaths.
III. CONCLUSION
The statute at issue should be deemed facially invalid because it bans all assisted suicides. A terminally ill individual who is suffering from great pain and who has made a competent decision should have a constitutional due process right to hasten his death. Because plaintiffs are in a position to now make a choice that I believe should survive any challenge from the state, I would hold that the statute represents an undue burden on that right.
The assumption that the recognition of this right would be problematic in its administration is not an appropriate consideration when determining the existence of a fundamental right. Indeed, constitutional litigation often creates the necessity to draw abstract lines that in practice are not easily workable. Nevertheless, the recognition of fundamental rights requires choices in these areas that are not readily ascribable to any particular administrative device.
We need only look to the development of the living will as an example of guidelines in the death and dying area that work effectively and remain constitutional. Pursuant to MCL 700.496; MSA 27.5496, a competent person already has the right to document the desire to refuse lifesaving medical treatment. While such documentation provides us with the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment, our laws currently do not permit us to choose to end our suffering as we near death *542through physician-prescribed medications. If we were allowed such an opportunity, our own reasoned judgment would prevail in each case.
There is no adequate distinction between the right of a terminally ill person to refuse unwanted medical treatment and the right to physician-assisted suicide. There is no sense in disallowing the competent choice to have a physician intervene to relieve intolerable suffering at the end of one’s life. Furthermore, such a result conflicts with what many of us would desire when faced with severe pain and an inevitable death.
Many citizens of this state are disturbed by defendant Kevorkian’s crusade and, at the same time, wish to see a resolution of the difficulties facing the terminally ill. Perhaps even more troubling is that, under this law, an individual is forbidden from consulting with a private, trusted physician about such matters. The recognition of a right to make such private decisions with a trusted physician would allow open and honest discussion with the patient of all options and consequences.
Substantive due process cases invariably address those rights that are considered so fundamental that they cannot be unduly burdened by the state. Here, it is fundamentally wrong not to allow a competent, terminally ill person who is suffering from great pain the opportunity to die with some dignity.
Therefore, I would hold that the plaintiffs may assert a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide if it can be shown that they have made a competent decision and are suffering from great pain. I would further allow, consistent with Cruzan, that the state may require proof of such a competent decision by clear and convincing evidence if it chooses to so legislate.
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of *543Appeals and allow plaintiffs to document their intent to receive physician-prescribed medications should their terminal illnesses progress to the point of great pain.
Levin, J., concurred with Mallett, J.

 In Griswold v Connecticut, 381 US 479, 500-501; 85 S Ct 1678; 14 L Ed 2d 510 (1965), in concurrence, Justice Harlan outlined the criteria for reviewing constitutional claims brought pursuant to the Due Process Clause stating that
the proper constitutional inquiry in this case is whether [the] statute infringes the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the enactment violates basic values "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” ....
While the relevant inquiry may be aided by resort to one or more of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, it is not dependent on them or any of their radiations. [Citations omitted.]
"Specific” provisions of the Constitution, no less than "due process,” lend themselves as readily to "personal” interpretations by judges whose constitutional outlook is simply to keep the Constitution in supposed "tune with the times” ....

 The right that should be recognized here is a privacy right as well as a liberty right. In Griswold, supra, the United States Supreme Court recognized that decisions of married couples concerning procreation are private in character. In Thornburgh v American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 US 747, 777, n 5; 106 S Ct 2169; 90 L Ed 2d 779 (1986), Justice Stevens observed that "the concept of privacy embodies the 'moral fact that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole.’ ”
The present case is also analogous to the family or bodily integrity cases to the extent these cases extended liberty interests to matters of public social concern. In Washington v Harper, 494 US 210; 110 S Ct 1028; 108 L Ed 2d 178 (1990), the Court found that an inmate has a significant liberty interest under the Due Process Clause in avoiding the unwanted administration of drugs. However, the Court found that the state’s compelling interest outweighed the inmate’s personal liberty interest. In Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1; 87 S Ct 1817; 18 L Ed 2d 1010 (1967), the Court held that couples have a liberty interest to marry outside of their own race.

 The United States Constitution does not, rior could it, specifically spell out each right a person maintains as an individual. The application of the express constitutional principles embodied in the Bill of Rights resolves only the easiest cases. Emanating from these principles, however, are implied rights and interests that are no less important to individual liberties than those specifically provided in the Bill of Rights. Griswold v Connecticut, n 1 supra. These rights lie within the parameters of the Bill of Rights, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Under the First Amendment, these unarticulated rights include the freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations, NAACP v Alabama ex rel Patterson, 357 US 449, 462; 78 S Ct 1163; 2 L Ed 2d 1488 (1958); the right to educate a child in a school of the parent’s choice, Pierce v Society of Sisters, 268 US 510; 45 S Ct 571; 69 L Ed 1070 (1925); and the right to study the German language in a private school, Meyer v Nebraska, 262 US 390; 43 S Ct 625; 67 L Ed 1042 (1923). Tangential to the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful search and seizure is a limited right to be free from the unlawful withdrawal of blood. Schmerber v California, 384 US 757; 86 S Ct 1826; 16 L Ed 2d 908 (1966). Attached to the Ninth Amendment is the historical recognition that additional rights exist outside the constitution’s plain wording.
The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments. [Griswold, supra at 488 (Goldberg, J., concurring).]
The concept that courts may construct new liberty rights pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment is well established. Pursuant to the *529Fourteenth Amendment, there is a fundamental right to marry a person of another race. Loving v Virginia, supra. Married persons have the right to receive medical advice regarding contraception. Griswold v Connecticut, supra; Eisenstadt v Baird, 405 US 438; 92 S Ct 1029; 31 L Ed 2d 349 (1972) (extending the right to unmarried persons); Carey v Population Services Int’l, 431 US 678; 97 S Ct 2010; 52 L Ed 2d 675 (1977) (recognizing the right to sell and distribute contraceptives).
Also pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment is the line of cases protecting a person’s right of personal autonomy and self-determination. Part of the right to personal autonomy is the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, Washington v Harper, supra, and of course the right to receive an abortion, Roe v Wade, 410 US 113; 93 S Ct 705; 35 L Ed 2d 147 (1973); Casey, supra.
This is not an exhaustive list of the rights that lie within the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, both in terms of the cases already decided as well as those to be decided in the future. As Justice Harlan declared in dissent in Poe v Ullman, 367 US 497, 543; 81 S Ct 1752; 6 L Ed 2d 989 (1961), these matters fall all along the "rational continuum” of rights. It is a mistake to focus on whether physician-assisted suicide is a right textually demonstrable within the body of the constitution.
The individual liberty interest in ending one’s suffering during terminal illness lies within the penumbras of the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. Furthermore, there is a privacy right emanating from the Fourteenth Amendment to seek guidance from a physician of choice so that an informed and knowledgeable decision can be made. As with the right to abortion, the right in the present case may be identified either as a privacy or liberty right.

 Indeed there is a great deal of historical antecedence for the proposition that abortion is a criminal offense. See Roe at 129-141 (tracing the criminal history of abortion).

 See In re Rosebush, 195 Mich App 675; 491 NW2d 633 (1992) (allowing the parents of a minor the right to determine whether life-sustaining treatment should be withheld or withdrawn from the minor). See also In re Conroy, 98 NJ 321; 486 A2d 1209 (1985); Donaldson v Lundgren, 2 Cal App 4th 1614, 1620; 4 Cal Rptr 2d 59 (1992); In re Quinlan, supra; Cruzan, supra at 270-274. See also anno: Judicial power to order discontinuance of life-sustaining treatment, 48 ALR4th 67.

 However, the Court ultimately held that the state’s interest in preserving the orderly administration of its prisons and mental institutions outweighed the inmate’s right of personal autonomy. Id.

 See Brophy v New England Sinai Hosp, 398 Mass 417, 434; 497 NE2d 626 (1986). "The duty of the State to preserve life must encompass a recognition of an individual’s right to avoid circumstances in which the individual himself would feel that efforts to sustain life demean or degrade his humanity.” See also Cruzan at 310-311.
This state also protects the rights of the terminally ill to refuse life-sustaining treatment as evidenced by the statutory allowance of a patient advocate to make a decision to withhold or withdraw treatment.
A patient advocate may make a decision to withhold or withdraw treatment which would allow a patient to die only if the patient has expressed in a clear and convincing manner that the patient advocate is authorized to make such a decision, and that the patient acknowledges that such a decision could or would allow the patient’s death. [MCL 700.496(7)(d); MSA 27.5496(7)(d).]

 Recent polls show increasing support for physician-assisted suicide under certain circumstances. In August, 1993, the Journal of Family Practice reported on a survey conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health that 61 percent of all Americans would vote for an initiative legalizing physician-assisted suicide. Furthermore, 52 percent of Americans would consider such an option if it was legal and they were terminally ill and suffering from great pain.
This sentiment also has support among the medical communities of the United States and other westernized nations. A survey of 156 internists and surgeons revealed that 61 percent agreed that doctors were currently practicing euthanasia by either accelerating death or withholding treatment. See Messinger, A gentle and easy death: From ancient Greece to beyond Cruzan toward a reasoned legal response to the societal dilemma of euthanasia, 71 Den ULR 175, 201 (1993). Out of 354 physicians responding to a survey conducted by the Medical Journal of Australia, 107 had provided the means by which patients could hasten their deaths. However, the number was twice as high for physicians who thought the law should be changed to allow it in some circumstances. In Britain, 273 physicians responded to a similar survey, and over half would consider physician-assisted suicide in some circumstances if it were legal.
Most recently, voters in the State of Oregon approved a referendum (the Death with Dignity Act) that would allow physician-assisted suicide under carefully regulated circumstances. Physicians may pre*533scribe suicide pills to patients with less than six months to live, but only after a second medical opinion and three requests from the patient are received. The patient must also be mentally competent and free from clinical depression.

 In Casey, 112 S Ct 2804, the Court reaffirmed Roe’s essential three-part holding:
First is a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State. Before viability, the State’s interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition of abortion or the imposition of a substantial obstacle to the woman’s effective right to elect the procedure. Second is a confirmation of the State’s power to restrict abortions after fetal viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies which endanger a woman’s life or health. And third is the principle that the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus that may become a child.

 In the only other case directly addressing the constitutionality of an assisted suicide law, Compassion in Dying v Washington, supra, the court was asked to rule on the constitutionality of the State of Washington’s assisted suicide law.
The court stated that abortion raises even more difficult questions about competing interests than does suicide by the terminally ill. "In reproductive rights cases, there is not only the interest of the pregnant woman seeking an abortion, but also the potential life interest which cannot speak for itself. By contrast, in the case of assisted suicide involving a competent person, only one life is involved and that individual can voice his or her wishes.” Id. at 1460. Significantly, the court found that the "concept of existence” language from Casey was "almost prescriptive” of recognizing the right of an individual to commit suicide. Id. at 1459, citing Casey, supra, 112 S Ct 2807.
The court concluded:
"[T]he suffering of a terminally ill person cannot be deemed any less intimate or personal, or any less deserving of protection from unwarranted governmental interference, than that of a pregnant woman. Thus, consonant with the reasoning in Casey, such an intimate personal decision falls within the realm of the liberties constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment.” [Id. at 1460. Emphasis added.]

 1 have signed my colleague’s opinion (Levin, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), and recognize that a person who is terminally ill and suffering from great pain and is facing an imminent death falls within the confines of the due process right I would recognize here.

 See also Quinlan, supra at 41.
We think that the State’s interest . . . weakens and the individual’s right to privacy grows as the degree of bodily invasion increases and the prognosis dims. Ultimately there comes a point at which the individual’s rights overcome the State interest.
Moreover, in the abortion context, "Roe v Wade was less a judgment about the relative importance of maternal liberty and fetal life, than it was a decision about who should make judgments of that sort.” Tribe, Constitutional Law, supra, p 1352 (contending that the decision is personal to the mother, not the state). Here, it is the individual who, in the appropriate circumstances, should make the decision to hasten death through physician-prescribed medications.

 [T]he common-law doctrine of informed consent is viewed as generally encompassing the right of a competent individual to refuse medical treatment. [Cruzan, supra at 277.]