Professor Margaret Battin:

I thank Dr. Jeanne. The increase can be understood in another way. The first thing to remember about this increase is that under US law in every single one of these jurisdictions, with the exception of Montana, which does not have a statute, all these patients must be identified as terminally ill. This is not a question of people simply electing suicide like ordinary suicides one might deal with in a psychiatric practice. These are people who are already dying and dying within an expected six months. That is a different kind of circumstance. The way we should see this is that what they are gaining is greater individual choice about how that death of theirs that is already coming shall go. This is to respect their choices and autonomous preferences to allow a death that can be determined in terms of time, setting, location, the people present, including family members and others such as religious advisers and spiritual companions, or anyone who might be important to somebody as they die.

It is to allow their death to be shaped the way they want, given that they cannot avoid dying but they can control the circumstances of dying. That is the main purpose.

It is important to understand that the US is the only jurisdiction of which I am aware that requires terminal illness. The European jurisdictions do not; they require intolerable or unbearable suffering. That would apply in the Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere. Switzerland has no such requirements, as far as I am aware. Terminal illness is the major safeguard in the US.