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Orignal calendar version prepared by Death With Dignity National Center at info@deathwithdignity.org or visit their website at Death With Dignity National Center

Calendar of major events

1906   The first euthanasia bill is drafted in Ohio.

 1938   The Euthanasia Society of America is founded.

 1967   The first living will is written by attorney Luis Kutner and Euthanasia Society members.

 1968   The first living will bill is introduced by Dr. Walter Sacket of Florida.

 1969   Elizabeth Kubler-Ross publishes On Death and Dying, opening discussion of the once-taboo subject of death.

 1970   The Euthanasia Society finishes distributing 60,000 living wills.

 1973   The American Hospital Association creates the Patient Bill of Rights, which includes informed consent and the right to refuse treatment.

 1974   The Euthanasia Society is renamed. It is now called the Society for the Right to Die.

 1975   The Van Dusens commit suicide. Henry P. Van Dusen, 77, and his wife, Elizabeth, 80, leaders of the ecumenical movement, choose to die rather than suffer from disabling conditions. Their note reads, "We still feel this is the best way and the right way to go."

 1976   The New Jersey Supreme Court allows Karen Ann Quinlan's parents to disconnect the respirator that keeps her alive, saying it is affirming the choice Karen herself would have made.

 1976   California Natural Death Act is passed. The nation's first aid in dying statute gives legal standing to living wills and protects physicians from being sued for failing to treat incurable illnesses.

 1976   Ten more states pass natural death laws.

 1978   "Whose Life Is It Anyway?", a play about a young artist who becomes quadriplegic, is staged in London and on Broadway, raising disturbing questions about the right to die. A film version appears in 1982.

 1979   Artist Jo Roman, dying of cancer, commits suicide at a much-publicized gathering of friends that is broadcast on network television and reported by The New York Times.

 1979   Two right-to-die organizations split. The Society for the Right to Die separates from Concern for Dying, a companion group that grew out of the Society's Euthanasia Education Council, over differences in strategic thinking.

 1980   The advice column "Dear Abby" publishes a letter from a reader agonizing over a dying loved one, generating 30,000 advance directive requests at the Society for the Right to Die.

 1980   The Hemlock Society is founded, advocating legal change and distributing how-to-die information. Its membership will grow to 50,000 within a decade.

 1983   Elizabeth Bouvia, a quadriplegic suffering from cerebral palsy, sues a California hospital to let her die of self-starvation while receiving comfort care. She loses, and files an appeal.

 1984   Advance care directives become recognized in 22 states and the District of Columbia.

 1985   Betty Rollin publishes Last Wish, her account of helping her mother to die after a long losing battle with breast cancer. The book becomes a best-seller.

 1986   Elizabeth Bouvia is granted the right to die by an appeals court. [However, she does not pursue a course of action to take her own life and later appeared in a television interview in the late 1990's in which she discusses her circumstances.]

 1986   Americans Against Human Suffering is founded in California, launching a campaign for what will become the 1992 California Death with Dignity Act.

 1987   The California State Bar Conference passes Resolution 3-4-87 to become the first public body to approve of physician-aid-in-dying.

 1988   The Journal of the American Medical Association prints "It's Over, Debbie," an unsigned article describing a sleepy resident giving a lethal injection to a woman dying of ovarian cancer. The public prosecutor makes an intense, unsuccessful effort to identify the physician in the article.

 1988   The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations passes a national resolution favoring aid in dying for the terminally ill, becoming the first religious body to affirm a right to die.

 1990   The Washington Initiative is filed, the first state voter referendum on the issue of death with dignity.

 1990   The American Medical Association adopts the formal position that with informed consent, a physician can withhold or withdraw treatment from a patient who is close to death, and may also discontinue life support of a patient in a permanent coma.

 1990   Dr. Jack Kevorkian assists in the death of Janet Adkins, a middle-aged woman with Alzheimer's Disease. Kevorkian subsequently flaunts the Michigan legislature's attempts to stop him from assisting in additional suicides.

 1990   The Supreme Court decides the Nancy Cruzan case, its first aid in dying ruling. The decision recognizes that competent adults have a constitutionally protected liberty interest that includes a right to refuse medical treatment; the court also allows a state to impose procedural safeguards to protect its interests.

 1990   Congress passes the Patient Self-Determination Bill, requiring hospitals that receive federal funds to tell patients that they have a right to demand or refuse treatment.

 1991   Dr. Timothy Quill writes about "Diane" in the New England Journal of Medicine, describing his provision of lethal drugs to a leukemia patient who chose to die at home by her own hand rather than undergo therapy that offered a 25 percent chance of survival.

 1991   A Nationwide Gallup poll finds that 75 percent of Americans approve of living wills.

 1991   Derek Humphry publishes Final Exit, a how-to book on "self-deliverance." Within 18 months the book sells 540,000 copies and tops best-seller lists.

 1991   Choice in Dying is formed by the merger of two aid in dying organizations, Concern for Dying and Society for the Right to Die. The new organization becomes known for defending patients' rights and promoting living wills, and will grow in five years to 150,000 members.

 1991   Washington State voters reject Ballot Initiative 119, which would have legalized physician-aided suicide and aid in dying. The vote is 54 percent to 46 percent.

 1992   Americans for Death with Dignity, formerly Americans Against Human Suffering, places the California Death with Dignity Act on the state ballot as Proposition 161.

 1992   Health care becomes a major political issue as presidential candidates debate questions of access, rising costs and the possible need for some form of rationing.

 1992   California voters defeat Proposition 161, which would have allowed physicians to hasten death by actively administering or prescribing medications for self administration by suffering, terminally ill patients. The vote again is 54 percent to 46 percent.

1993   "Advance directive" laws are achieved in 48 states, with passage imminent in the remaining two.

 1993   Compassion in Dying is founded in Washington state to counsel the terminally ill and provide information about how to die without suffering and "with personal assistance, if necessary, to intentionally hasten death." The group sponsors suits challenging state laws against assisted suicide.

 1993   President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly support advance directives and sign living wills, acting after the death of Hugh Rodham, Hillary Rodham Clinton's father.

 1993   Oregon Right to Die is founded in order to write and subsequently to help pass the Oregon Death with Dignity Act.

 1994   The Death with Dignity Education Center is founded in California as a national nonprofit organization that works to promote a comprehensive, humane, responsive system of care for terminally ill patients.

 1994   More presidential living wills are revealed: after the deaths of former President Richard Nixon and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, it is reported that both had signed advanced directives.

 1994   The California Bar approves physician-assisted suicide. With an 85 percent majority and no active opposition, the Conference of Delegates says physicians should be allowed to prescribe medication to terminally ill, competent adults for self-administration in order to hasten death.

 1994   All states and the District of Columbia now recognize some type of advance directive procedure.

 1994   Washington State's anti-suicide law is overturned. In Compassion v. Washington, a district court finds that a law outlawing assisted suicide violates the 14th Amendment. Judge Rothstein writes, "The court does not believe that a distinction can be drawn between refusing life-sustaining medical treatment and physician-assisted suicide by an uncoerced, mentally competent, terminally ill adult."

 1994   In New York, the lawsuit Quill et al v. Koppell is filed to challenge the New York law prohibiting assisted suicide. Quill loses, and files an appeal.

 1994   Oregon voters approve Measure 16, a Death with Dignity Act ballot initiative that would permit terminally ill patients, under proper safeguards, to obtain a physician's prescription to end life in a humane and dignified manner. The vote is 51 percent.

 1994   U.S. District Court Judge Hogan issues a temporary restraining order against Oregon's Measure 16, following that with an injunction that bars the state from putting the law into effect.

 1995   Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense and Education Center is founded.

 1995   Washington State's Compassion ruling is overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, reinstating the anti-suicide law.

 1995   U.S. District Judge Hogan rules that Oregon Measure 16, the Death with Dignity Act, is unconstitutional on grounds it violates the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. The ruling is appealed.

 1995   Surveys find that doctors disregard most advance directives. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that physicians were unaware of the directives of three-quarters of all elderly patients admitted to a New York hospital; the California Medical Review reports that three-quarters of all advance directives were missing from Medicare records in that state.

 1995   Oral arguments in the appeal of Quill v. Coppell et al contest the legality of New York's anti-suicide law before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

 1995   The Compassion case is reconsidered in Washington state by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel of 11 judges, the largest panel ever to hear a physician assisted dying case.

 1996   The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the Compassion finding in Washington state, holding that "a liberty interest exists in the choice of how and when one dies, and that the provision of the Washington statute banning assisted suicide, as applied to competent, terminally ill adults who wish to hasten their deaths by obtaining medication prescribed by their doctors, violates the Due Process Clause." The ruling affects laws of nine western states and Guam.

 1996   A Michigan jury acquits Dr. Kevorkian of violating a state law banning assisted suicides.

 1996   The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the Quill finding, ruling that "The New York statutes criminalizing assisted suicide violate the Equal Protection Clause because, to the extent that they prohibit a physician from prescribing medications to be self-administered by a mentally competent, terminally ill person in the final stages of his terminal illness, they are not rationally related to any legitimate state interest." The ruling affects laws in New York, Vermont and Connecticut. (On April 17, the court stays enforcement of its ruling for 30 days pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

 1996   The U.S. Supreme Court announces it will review both cases sponsored by Compassion in Dying, known now as Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill.

 1996   ACLU attorney Robert Rivas files an amended complaint challenging the assisted-suicide law. This time Dr. Cecil McIver is joined by three patients: C.B. "Chuck" Castonguay, 65, a cancer patient from Volusia County; Robert G. Cron, 72, also a cancer patient, from Pinellas' County; and Charles E. Hall, 40, who has AIDS, of Citrus County.

 1997   Oral arguments set for the New York and Washington cases on physician assisted dying. The cases were heard in tandem on January 8, but not combined. A ruling is expected in June or July.

 1997   ACLU attorney Robert Rivas files an amended complaint challenging the 128 year-old Florida law banning assisted suicide. Dr. Cecil Meyer is joined by three patients: cancer patients C.C. "Chuck" Castonguay and Robert G. Cron, and Charles E. Hall, who has aids.

 1997   On May 13 the Oregon House of Representatives voted 32 to 26 to return Measure 16 to the voters in November for repeal (H.B. 2954). On June 10 the Oregon Senate voted 20 to 10 to pass H.B. 2954 and return Measure 16 to the voters for repeal. The special election will be held November 4, 1997. No such attempt to overturn the will of the voters has been tried in Oregon since 1908.

 1997   On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decisions of the 9th and 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington v. Glucksberg and Quill v. Vacco, upholding as constitutional state statutes which bar assisted suicide. However, the court also validated the concept of "double effect," openly acknowledging that death hastened by increased palliative measures does not constitute prohibited conduct so long as the intent is the relief of pain and suffering. The majority opinion ended with the pronouncement that : "Throughout the Nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality of physician assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society."

 1997   On November 4, the people of Oregon voted by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent against Measure 51, which would have repealed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act.

 1998   On March 24, the first publically acknowledged doctor-assisted suicide occured in Oregon --a Portland women suffering from terminal breast cancer.

 1998   On November 3, the voters of Michigan defeat 71% to 29% a ballot measure to make Physician Assisted Suicide legal.

 1998   On November 22, CBS on "60 Minutes" airs a segement with Dr. Kevorkian, who was shown in a video clip giving a lethal injection to a terminally ill man Thomas Youk.

 1999   Oregon releases information on Oregon's Death with Dignity Act: The First Year's Experience

 1999   On March 26, Kevorkian convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Thomas Youk.

 2000  Oregon's Death with Dignity Act: The Second Year's Experience

 2000  Maine voters in the November election rejected by a 51% margin a ballot initiative for a "Maine Death with Dignity Act", a provision similar to that in effect in Oregon.

 2001  Oregon's Death with Dignity Act: Three Years of Legalized Physician-assisted Suicide

2001  On April 10, The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize voluntary euthanasia or suicide.

2001  On November 6, Attorney General Ashcroft blocked Oregon's assisted-suicide law yesterday, authorizing federal drug agents to punish doctors who prescribe federally controlled drugs to help terminally ill patients die. The action was suspended two days later by a temporary restraining order pending a hearing on a permanent injunction to be heard within 10 days. That restraining order was extended on November 20 for five months at which time arguments will be heard.

2002  "Fourth Annual Report on Oregon's Death with Dignity Act"

2002  On April 17, a federal judge U.S. District Judge Robert Jones ruled that the U.S. Justice Department lacks the authority to overturn an Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicides. This action voids the November 6, 2001 attempt by Attorney General Ashcroft to overturn Oregon's PAS statute by punishing physicians who prescribe federally controlled drugs to help terminally ill patients die.

For more information contact Death With Dignity National Center at info@deathwithdignity.org or visit their website at Death With Dignity National Center