Research, media and law on the right to die, in one place.

In the jurisdictions where it is legal, assisted dying is an end-of-life choice for people who meet the eligibility criteria set by the law in their jurisdiction. Each of these laws requires the request to be voluntary.

Used by opponents of assisted dying, the argument is that assisted dying laws inevitably widen in scope once passed. The World Federation strongly disagrees. The Federation's view is that where a law has been amended, the jurisdiction's own legislators did so after seeing how the law worked in practice.

Assisted dying is the term the World Federation of Right to Die Societies uses for procedures to end life for a person who is suffering. It includes the provision of medication to a person for self-administration, as well as the administration of medication by a health practitioner, in both cases causing death.

Advance care planning is a process that extends the right of competent adults to guide their medical care into periods when they can no longer make decisions. Done thoroughly, it has three steps: thinking through one's values and preferences, talking about them with others, and writing them down.

Some ethicists have argued that what begins as a patient's right to request an assisted death under specified conditions will eventually become a doctor's duty. The Federation's position is that medical professionals should never be required to assist in dying, just as they are not required to carry out other procedures they object to.