THE MOVEMENT TO make assisted death legal has often been called the right-to-die movement. The term may seem more than a little strange at first. Death, after all, is guaranteed to everyone, although most people try to avoid it as long as they can. Who, then, could possibly need, let alone want, a "right" to die"

Of course, the movement's members say, what they want is not really a right to die. Rather, they ask for the right to have some control over the time and manner of their death. Barbara Dority, a leader in the Washington State branch of the Hemlock Society, a major right-to-die organization, says that "the right to die with dignity, in our own time and on our own terms," is the "ultimate civil right."

First discussions of euthanasia

Until the late twentieth century, few people would have dreamed of...