The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was the first physician-assisted dying statute in the world. But efforts to legalize assisted death in the United States date back to the early 20th century.
In her book, Dying with Dignity: A Legal Approach to Assisted Death, published by Praeger in 2015, Giza Lopes recounts the history of legalization of aid-in-dying legislation, from the 1906 euthanasia bills in Ohio and Iowa to the Baxter v. Montana ruling in 2009 (the second part of the book, tackles the same issue in European countries, discussing the history of assisted death in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland).
Lopes does not argue whether assisted death should be legalized (though her focus on tracing legalization successes, rather than failures would suggest she supports the end-of-life option) but “how and why the pleas for legalization of euthanasia in the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States and elsewhere were transmuted into the assisted-suicide laws we have today.” Her focus is squarely on the legal aspects of medicalization of death and of the “gradual redefinition of (assisted) suicide from sin/crime to a decriminalized, secular solution to pain and suffering.”
With its intensely factual treatment of the subject matter, copious notes, and a rich bibliography (the latter two take up more than a third of the book), Dying with Dignity is an excellent resource. Particularly the chapters on court battles in the 1960s-1990s and the campaign to pass the Washington Death with Dignity Act provide in-depth detail on two paths to legalizing physician-assisted dying in the US.
The reader won’t find a history of the pioneering Oregon Death with Dignity Act, perhaps because it has been documented well elsewhere. Also not covered is the history of Vermont’s Act 39, the first Death with Dignity statute passed in a state legislature (though this is more unfortunate, it’s understandable given the book’s writing overlapped with the passage of Vermont’s law).
Despite some gaps, Dying with Dignity will serve as a helpful reference, particularly for legal scholars. We recommend it for anyone seeking an in-depth look at efforts to legalize assisted dying in the US and Europe.
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