It may help that other countries have begun legalizing the practice. There are currently six nations that permit physician-assisted suicide: Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Albania, Colombia, and Switzerland. Each nation has its own unique rules dealing with the process. However, Switzerland--which has legally permitted physician-assisted suicide since 1940--remains the only country that allows foreigners to receive help in terminating their lives. A Swiss assisted-suicide clinic called Dignitas has accepts foreigners, even those who have untreatable clinical depression. (See the March 2010 Atlantic feature story "Death Becomes Him.")

As Dignitas has gained mainstream attention, residents of other countries have been moved to overturn their own laws. In a case that opened Tuesday, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is challenging Canada's prohibition against helping mentally competent adults commit suicide. The lawsuit includes four other plaintiffs, including the daughter of Kathleen Carter, an 89-year-old woman who had to travel all the way to Switzerland to receive physician-assisted suicide. Carter had been diagnosed with spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal column. According to her daughter, the pain was debilitating, her life was spent in a wheelchair, and it was not long before she would be confined to a bed. Dignitas provided Carter with a lethal dose of medicine, which she took herself. While her family was relieved to see her pass away peacefully, it cost a total of $30,000, including travel fees, to achieve that result. The case was filed in British Columbia's Supreme Court, though it's expected to wind up with the Canadian Supreme Court.

In the UK, the right to physician-assisted suicide has been a hotly contested issue for years. Scottish Parliament member Margo McDonald has taken steps towards introducing legislation that would legalize physician-assisted suicide. A similar bill was sponsored by McDonald last year, though it was ultimately defeated in Parliament. In England and Wales, the penalty for assisting a suicide is up to 14 years in prison. Other countries are taking small steps in the same direction: Australia passed a law in its Northern Territory to permit physician-assisted suicide, though it was repealed after nine months in 1997. And just three years ago, Mexico passed a law that allows doctors to withhold life-sustaining medicine with a patient's consent.

In America, the debate over physician-assisted suicide has been going on since 1906, when Ohio debated whether to make the practice legal. But serious efforts to legalize the practice began in 1994, when voters in Oregon passed the state's Death With Dignity law. There was an attempted repeal, but the legislation was finally enacted in 1998, and in the 2005 case of Gonzales v. Oregon, the Supreme Court upheld the legislation by a vote of 6 to 3. The court ruled that the Attorney General couldn't prohibit doctors from prescribing lethal medicines in a state where physician-assisted suicide was allowed.