Physician-assisted suicide:

■■ The right to allow a physician to assist patients in dying who are terminally ill and mentally competent to determine how they wish to spend the remaining days of their lives.

■■ The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was the first statute allowing terminally ill Oregon residents to obtain prescriptions from their physicians for self-administered, lethal medications.

■■ California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington now have similar statutes.