Should Assisted Living Become Assisted Dying?

The New York Times here jumps on the latest darling pro-deather issue: Voluntary ceasing to eat and drink as a way to die. Interesting angle: Should this be allowed in an assisted "living" facility? In this case, the facility (rightly, I think) reported the couples' actions as a kind of suicide-in-progress. Predictably, the story is very sympathetic to the couple who chose to die.

Deciding to Die, Then Shown the Door

Armond and Dorothy Rudolph had talked about their plans for more than a decade. They had a mutual horror of a lingering decline in their final years. They’d joined an organization that supports the right to end life when illness or pain becomes overwhelming; they’d attended meetings and given both their children literature on the subject. They’d drafted advance directives.
“Their great fear was that they’d end up in a nursing home,” their son, Neil Rudolph, told me. “That was hell for them, to have people waiting on them, to have no independence.” more