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Alex is right. Since when do you need to have all those formalities in place to off yourself? I suspect that perhaps it's a way of expiating self-guilt, and turn the act into a medical procedure. Doctors have been 'helping' terminal patients along for many, many years, without the benefit of legislation.
I had a dear friend who was dying of cancer, and it was everywhere- her hips, her spine, her brain. She had excruciating pain that nothing would touch, yet could not commit suicide due to her devout Catholic beliefs. Her docs put her on very aggressive chemo, which outraged me, as we all knew she would never get better and the chemo made her so sick. She died two weeks later of renal failure. A friend in the medical community told me that if they hadn't done the chemo, she could have lingered for months like that. The chemo shut her system down, and in the end she drifted peacefully away. This was done in a Catholic hospital, btw.
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