Some 30 years ago an eminent constitutional law scholar, Charles L. Black, Jr, spoke of ‘toiling uphill against that heaviest of all argumental weights — the weight of a slogan. ’I am reminded of that observation when I confront the slogan the ‘right to die. ’

THE ‘RIGHT TO DIE’

Few rallying cries or slogans are more appealing and seductive than the ‘right to die. ’ But few are more fuzzy, more misleading, or more misunderstood. The phrase has been used loosely by many people to embrace at least four different rights:

1. the right to reject or to terminate unwanted medical procedures, including life–saving treatment;

2. the right to commit suicide or, as some call it, the right to ‘rational’ suicide;

3. the right to assisted suicide, that is, the right to obtain another's help in committing suicide; and

4. the right to active voluntary euthanasia, that is, the right to authorize another to kill you intentionally and directly.

Each of these four ‘rights’ should be kept separate and distinct. Unfortunately, many times they are not.

First of all, neither the 1976 Quintan case nor the 1990 Cruzan case (the only case involving death, dying and the ‘right to privacy’ ever decided by the US Supreme Court) establishes an absolute or general right to die — a right to end one's life in any manner one sees fit.