Assisted suicide is the common term for actions by which an individual helps another person voluntarily bring about his or her own death. "Assistance" may mean providing one with the means (drugs or equipment) to end one's own life, but may extend to other actions. It differs to euthanasia where another person ends the life. The current waves of global public debate have been ongoing for decades, centering on legal, religious, and moral conceptions of "suicide" and a personal "right to death". Legally speaking, the practice may be legal, illegal, or undecided depending on the culture or jurisdiction.
Read more about Assisted Suicide: Legality, Published Research, Organizations Opposed To Assisted Suicide, Improvements in End-of-life Decision Making
Famous quotes containing the words assisted and/or suicide:
“We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: “I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.””
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)