The percentage of Americans who believe doctors should do everything in their power to save a life (31 percent) has doubled since 1990. Conversely, the percentage of Americans who concede that there are some situations in which doctors should allow their patients to die (66 percent) has decreased from twenty years ago, according to a Pew survey released on Thursday.
One other major difference between now and 1990 is that more people are willing to stake themselves to a position. Twenty years ago, 15 percent of responders supported life-at-all-cost and 73 percent were willing to consider other alternatives, leaving 12 percent undecided. Twenty years later, just 3 percent of the population hasn't made up its mind, according to the survey.
Perhaps greater press coverage, such as a widely reported 2005 Florida court case, has helped more Americans take a stance, according to Reuters. When the husband of Terri Schiavo, who'd been on life support for the last fifteen years, wanted to pull the plug, he had to overcome a series of highly publicized legal challenges before ultimately winning in 2005 and terminating his wife's medical support. More recently, a Pennsylvania woman was accused of illegally helping her gravely ill father commit suicide by giving him a lethal dose of morphine, according to Pew. Last month, a 32 year-old hunter willingly chose to end his own life support because he didn't want to live out his days on oxygen assisted tubes and in a wheelchair
Since 1990, four states -- Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Vermont -- have legalized doctor-assisted suicides for terminally ill patients in pain. Americans are more evenly split on this issue when they have to envision themselves as the patient and certain parameters are established. For example, 57 percent of Americans would ask their doctors to stop treatments so they could die if they had a terminal illness and were in a lot of pain while 35 percent would have their doctors do everything to save their life. The split between death and life narrows to 52 and 37 if the patient has an incurable disease and is totally dependent on another for care and is dead even at 46 and 46 if the patient has an incurable disease and struggle to function in day to day life, according to the Pew poll.
