In 1994, Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act, which legalized physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients within six months of death. The controversial state law went into effect in 1997, after Oregon voters turned down a ballot measure that would have repealed it. Questions raised by Oregon’s sanctioning of assisted suicide have provoked fierce debate among lawmakers, ethicists, and the general public.

Supporters of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act maintain that the terminally ill often experience relentless pain and should have the right to kill themselves rather than suffer through the last agonizing weeks of the dying process. Assisted suicide, proponents argue, simply hastens a process that terminal disease has already set in motion, granting the fatally ill a modicum of dignity and control over their final days. Moreover, supporters point out, the Oregon law...