The Uniform Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (1985, revised 1989), has been recommended as a Uniform Act in the United States, and subsequently been passed by many states. The law allows a person to declare a living will specifying that, if the situation arises, he or she does not wish to be kept alive through life support if terminally ill or in a coma. The patient may also obtain a health care power of attorney. This power of attorney appoints an agent to make medical decision for the patient in case the patient becomes incompetent.
Many people make use of this act because they do not wish to endure any pain or suffering if weakened by a fatal disease. They want to "die with dignity," so that family members will not have to go through emotional pain of watching their loved one sleep through many years of life with no response to any stimuli.
This form of death is known as passive euthanasia, where death is not inflicted with drugs, but is allowed by cutting off life support.
Famous quotes containing the words uniform, rights, ill and/or act:
“The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than a hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the Central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreements between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our people always.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I argued that the chastity of women was of much more consequence than that of men, as the property and rights of families depend upon it.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterwards act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your better judgment.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)