Hawaii Passes a Death With Dignity Law

Hawaii becomes the sixth state (plus Wash. D.C.) to pass a Death With Dignity law, permitting terminally ill persons to choose to end their own life in certain situations. Like the laws in other states, Hawaii's law requires agreement of two doctors that the patient is mentally sound and has less than six months to live. If such conditions are met, the patient is prescribed a lethal dose of a medication (usually a powerful barbiturate) that they may use (or not) at their own discretion.

Death With Dignity laws continue to gain traction. One reason is that both a majority of Americans and a majority of doctors now support them. High-profile cases such as that of Brittany Maynard (see Johnson's Human Biology; Concepts and Current Issues, 8e. p. 480) have kept end-of-life issues in the public eye. And it helps that there has been no evidence of misuse or abuse of such laws in the first few states that passed them.

The number of people who choose to take advantage of Death With Dignity laws remains small. In Oregon, which has had a Death With Dignity law since 1997, only 218 people requested lethal prescriptions in 2017 and only 143 people used their prescriptions to end their lives. Most were cancer patients over the age of 65.