http://www.assistedsuicide.org/suicide_laws.html


The only four places that today openly and legally, authorize active assistance in dying of patients, are:

1. Oregon (since l997, physician-assisted suicide only);
2. Switzerland (1941, physician and non-physician assisted suicide only);
3. Belgium (2002, permits 'euthanasia' but does not define the method;
4. Netherlands (voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide lawful since April 2002 but permitted by the courts since l984).

Two doctors must be involved in Oregon, Belgium, and the Netherlands, plus a psychologist if there are doubts about the patient's competency. But that is not stipulated in Switzerland, although at least one doctor usually is because the right-to-die societies insist on medical certification of a hopeless or terminal condition before handing out the lethal drugs.
The Netherlands permits voluntary euthanasia as well as physician-assisted suicide, while both Oregon and Switzerland bar death by injection.
Dutch law enforcement will crack down on any non-physician assisted suicide they find, recently sentencing an old man to six months imprisonment for helping a sick, old woman to die.
Switzerland alone does not bar foreigners, but careful watch is kept that the reasons for assisting are altruistic, as the law requires. In fact, only one of the four groups in that country, DIGNITAS, chooses to assist foreigners. When this willingness was published in newspapers worldwide, sick people from all over Europe, and occasionally America, started trekking to Switzerland to get a hastened death. In 2001 the Swiss National Council confirmed the assisted suicide law but kept the prohibition of voluntary euthanasia.
Belgian law speaks only of 'euthanasia' being available under certain conditions. 'Assisted suicide' appears to be a term that Belgians are not familiar with. It is left to negotiation between the doctor and patient as to whether death is by lethal injection or by prescribed overdose. The patient must be a resident of Belgium (pop.: 10 million), though not necessarily a citizen. In its first full year of implementation, 203 people received euthanasia from a doctor.
All three right-to-die organizations in Switzerland help terminally ill people to die by providing counselling and lethal drugs. Police are always informed. As we have said, only one group, DIGNITAS in Zurich, will accept foreigners who must be either terminal, or severely mentally ill, or clinically depressed beyond treatment. (Note: Dutch euthanasia law has caveats permitting assisted suicide for the mentally ill in rare and incurable cases, provided the person is competent.)
The Oregon Death With Dignity Act came under heavy pressure from the US Federal government in 2001 when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a directive essentially and immediately gutting the law. This brought on a public outcry that the Federal government was nullifying a law twice voted on by Oregon citizens. A disqualification of democracy! An interference with states' rights! Immediately the state of Oregon went to court (2002) to nullify the directive, won at the first stage, but the appeals are likely to continue until 2004. Since l980, right-to-die groups have tried to change the laws in Washington State, California, Michigan, Maine, Hawaii, and Vermont, so far without success. Thus in the USA, Oregon stands alone and under great pressure.
In 2005 the US Supreme Court agreed to the federal government's request for it to decide whether Oregon's law was constitutional. The case concerned not so much the ethical correctness of physician-assisted suicide but turned legally on whether it was the federal government or the states which controlled dangerous drugs, as used by doctors in Oregon. The court's decision, expected in early 2006, will affect pain control throughout America.