Right-to-die legislation is a current debate in both the UK and US. The Netherlands has had a right-to-die law that allows doctor assisted suicide since 2002. In the country, an estimated 6,000 individuals chose the legal assisted suicide in 2014, and the current rate of assisted suicide is one out of 33 individuals. In early January 2013, Andre Verhoeven, a 64-year-old family man living in a care home with acute leukemia and paralyzed from the neck down, chose to end his life with the assistance of a doctor with his family present. Gaby Olthuis, a mother of two teenagers who heard a constant noise compared to the scratching of nails on a chalkboard, ended her life with the help of a doctor from a “Life End clinic” who came to her home.
See Sue Reid, The Country Where Death is Now Just a Lifestyle Choice, Daily Mail, Jan. 1, 2015.
