Physician-assisted suicide in the United States

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, University of Freiburg, course: American Society, language: English, abstract: Physician-assisted suicide has been and still is a major issue in American society. Questions whether a physician should be able to help a terminally-ill patient to commit suicide by prescribing him lethal medications and if such an act is morally justifiable have long split the population. The first real discussions started in 1828 when the first American statute was passed in New York which explicitly made assisted suicide illegal. Many other states followed this example and legally the issue was settled at that time.