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![handle is hein.journals/remand59 and id is 1 raw text is:
It's Not About How We Die, But How
We Live: A Look at Physician-Assisted
Suicide in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts1
Marcus DiBacco*
INTRODUCTION
The inevitability of death is one commonly met with fear, depression,
and anxiety, but by one way or another, all life must end.2 If death is natural,
then [w]hat's wrong with death ... ? What are we so mortally afraid of,?
Why can't we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and
dignity ... ?3 Philosophers contemplated these and similar questions
relating to suicide throughout history.4 Plato, for example, condemned the
act and suggested it be punished by denying the actor the normal burial rites
practiced at the time; however he allowed for four exceptions, including
what he referred to as extreme and unavoidable personal misfortune.5 In
Anglo-American history, the common law forbade suicide outright and
punished those who committed it.6 Jurisdictions repealed these laws because
they impacted the actor's family who were already suffering the loss of their
loved one, rather than the actor.7 Discussion on how the law and society
address suicide changed over time and continues to do so.8 In 1868, the
passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution afforded all
1 THE LAST SAMURAI, at 2:16:45-2:16:55 (Warner Bros. 2003) (demonstrating that when life
inevitably concludes, how one lived his life is far more important than how it ended).
* J.D. Candidate, New England Law I Boston (2025).
2 Atara Wertentheil, Death Is Inevitable: Learning How Not to Fear It, LONG ISLAND PSYCH. PLLC
(July 30, 2022), https://perma.cc/SGM4-WES3.
3 PATCH ADAMS, at 1:41:21-1:41:31 (Universal Pictures 1998).
4 See Univ. of Utah, THE ETHICS OF SUICIDE DIGIT. ARCHIVE, https://perma.cc/FF4A-D4UA
(last visited Jan. 17, 2024).
5 Michael Cholbi, Suicide § 2.1, STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA PHIL., https://perma.cc/XCA7-2U23
(last updated Nov. 9, 2021).
6 Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 711-12 (1997).
7 Id.
8 See generally id. at 710-18.
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/remand59&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)