"Deliverance" is no ordinary computer program. You run it on a special laptop connected to a vein in your arm.

After a series of questions, the screen offers a last chance to stop. It says: "If you press YES, you will cause a lethal injection to be given in 30 seconds, and will die. YES/NO?"

In Australia this week, future users of the program were anxiously counting the days until the world's first voluntary suicide law takes effect. The official date is July 1, and reports say the sick and dying have already begun migrating toward the town of Darwin, where the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act originated.

Most of the state's doctors are staying away. Appalled, the local chapter of the Australian Medical Association, an Aboriginal clergyman and church groups have filed legal challenges against the law. The territory's Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case Monday. If the court upholds the law, then only Prime Minister John Howard has the power to avert a most grave step with disturbing moral and social implications for his own country and all humankind.

Advocates of doctor-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia the world over claim that theirs is the most humane--and even loving--approach to the suffering caused by terminal illness. An approach, they say, that affirms our right to choose when to die, and how to die with dignity. Opponents regard assisted suicide as an assault on the sanctity of human life. If the right to suicide is codified, they ask, who will protect the elderly from feeling that they must agree to die to unburden their families? What will insulate the sick from the equations of budget cutters fretting about scarce resources? On Tuesday, a policy board of the American Medical Association voted firmly to continue its opposition to physician-assisted suicide.