Tomorrow, November 6, 2012, the people of Massachusetts have the chance to vote for a change in the law, deciding whether a physician may provide a dying patient with medication to bring about a faster, easier death if the patient chooses.If this ballot initiative passes, it will be binding, and Massachusetts will join Oregon, which implemented a virtually identical statute in 1998, and Washington, which did the same in 2009, as the only states where voters approved this form of physician-assisted dying, sometimes called aid-in-dying.
The New York Review of Books published a recommended article (May Doctors Help You to Die?) on the history of the developments leading up to this day in the USA.