The Constitution and Hastening Inevitable Death (IN: Last Rights? Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Debated, edited by M M Uhlmann)

The author argues that Michigan’s ban on assisted suicide imposes an undue burden on what he maintains is the constitutionally protected right of terminally ill patients to hasten inevitable death. He argues that the important question is not whether there is a constitutional right to assisted suicide or the right to die. The question is whether an absolute ban on the use of physician-prescribed medications by terminally ill people is an undue burden on their liberty interest as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause.