156 Alan Sokobin

dual Supreme Court decisions on assisted suicide.?! In the Wash­ ington case, the Court said that states were free to pursue“the earnest and profound debate about the legality and practical­ity”242 of the issue. The significant portion of the electorate that supported such initiatives offers promise that the issue will con­tinue to be ardently debated.

The parliament of Australia ’s Northern Territory was the first western legislature to enact legislation giving terminally ill adults the right to actively end their lives.” The legal right was short-lived. Australia ’s federal parliament reacted with speed and struck down the territory's voluntary euthanasia law.?*

In this country there was a recent, important and notable decision. The United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, sit­ting en banc upheld the decision’ of a U.S. district court judge who held that“a competent, terminally ill adult has a constitu­tionally guaranteed right under the Fourteenth Amendment to commit physician-assisted suicide.”?** Responding to the ques­tion of whether individuals have the liberty to“determine the time and manner of one’s death” the court quoted Justice O’Con­nor’s concurring opinion in Cruzan’¥’ where she questioned whether there exists a rationale for government to enter into the realm of a person's“liberty, dignity, and freedom.”?*® In a pointed reference to Casey’*’ the Ninth Circuit reiterated a fundamental message,“[t]hese matters, involving the most intimate and per­sonal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty pro­tected by the Fourteenth Amendment .”?° The court extended the liberty interest and protection beyond those who are competent to make an informed decision in this critical matter.“Our conclusion is strongly influenced by, but not limited to, the plight of mentally competent, terminally ill adults. We are influenced as well by the plight of others, such as those whose existence is reduced to a vegetative state or a permanent and irreversible state of uncon­sciousness.”?! While infants and minors were not specifically included in the court's statement, it is reasonable to infer that they are a part of the class intended to be covered in the opinion. Scrap­ing the heels of the Ninth Circuit decision was the even more recent judgment of the U.S. Second Circuit in Quill, subsequently reviewed by the Supreme Court. ?? Physicians brought an action to declare unconstitutional two New York statutes penalizing assistance in suicide. The basic argument of the physicians was: