The Constitutional Right to Self-Directed Death and Reciprocal Responsibilities of Health Care Professionals

This Article undertakes a detailed examination of a critical, yet virtually unexplored, area of the debate about whether there is a constitutional right to suicide which would protect the individual’s right to terminate his own existence in certain circumstances. Historical analysis of the legal proscription of self-destruction reveals that the origins of this taboo lie in theological dogma. This Article endeavors to show that the rationale behind the age-old proscription of self-willed death will not survive modern-day constitutional scrutiny. In so doing, it will demonstrate the pervasive influence of religious ideologies on the legal interdiction of suicide, and suggest that modern legal thought need not be bound by the traditional eschatologies of these ideologies. Now that medical technology can extend human existence beyond the point where the rational person might well choose to die, universal proscriptions of suicide based only on blind imitation of the past must be reexamined.