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Article: Assisted Suicide
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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ASSISTED SUICIDE
ASSISTED SUICIDE
is the act of helping people to end their lives by providing information or means, which is self-administered. By contrast, euthanasia is the intentional killing of an individual in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy. Traditionally, the law has considered any kind of suicide one of the most heinous crimes against society. In colonial America, under common law any one who committed suicide forfeited all his goods, leaving his family destitute in many cases. The colonies eventually abolished these harsh penalties, recognizing that the laws punished the wrong people. Lawyer Zephaniah Swift wrote in 1796 that to punish the family of an offender ...