ABSTRACT
Two conceptual lines have played important roles in the development of the right to die: that between natural and unnatural death and that between informed refusals of life-sustaining treatment and suicide. Both lines have become decrepit. A natural death is now virtually impossible for hospitalized patients. One way for physicians to assist suicide is for them to write orders that withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment at patient request. One can commit suicide by omissions. Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia breached the line completely. In his concurring opinion, he denied perceiving any inherent difference between a patient's refusing life-sustaining treatment and suicide. Thus he wrote that "there is nothing distinctive about accepting death through the refusal of food or through the failure to shut off the engine and get out of the car after parking in one's garage after work". At common law, suicide was self-murder, wrongful self-killing. Decisional capacity was an element of the common law's definition of suicide.
