Terminally ill patients with less than six months to live will soon be able to ask their doctors to prescribe them lethal medication in Washington state.

But even though the "Death with Dignity" law takes effect Thursday, people who might seek the life-ending prescriptions could find their doctors conflicted or not willing to write them.

Many doctors are hesitant to talk publicly about where they stand on the issue, said Dr. Tom Preston, a retired cardiologist and board member of Compassion & Choices, the group that campaigned for and supports the law.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Life Ethics

1. Irenaeus wrote: Libertarianism taken to yet another logical conclusion. March 2, 9:35 pm | [comment link]

2. Hursley wrote: We will gradually see this more and more throughout the nation, fueled not only by libertarianism (or autonomy/secularist thinking), but by economic practicalities. The same forces will push the “new eugenics” of gene therapies & the control of our fertility choices more and more out into the open, I think. The perverted “logic” of our nation’s move towards the atomized individual is ineluctable. March 2, 9:45 pm | [comment link]

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