More than two-thirds of Americans believe there are circumstances in which a patient should be allowed to die, but they are closely divided on whether it should be legal for a doctor to help terminally ill patients end their own lives by prescribing fatal drugs, a new AP-Ipsos poll finds.<\/p>\n
The results were released Tuesday, just days before euthanasia advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian is freed from a Michigan prison after serving more than eight years for second-degree murder in the poisoning of a man with Lou Gehrig’s disease.<\/p>\n
Kevorkian’s defiant assisted suicide campaign, which he waged for years before his conviction, fueled nationwide debate in the U.S. about patients’ right to die and the role that physicians should play.<\/p>\n
Though demonized by his critics as a callous killer, Kevorkian – who is to be released Friday – maintains relatively strong public support. The AP-Ipsos poll found that 53 percent of those surveyed thought he should not have been jailed; 40 percent supported his imprisonment. The results were similar to an ABC News poll in 1999 that found 55 percent disagreeing with his conviction.<\/p>\n
The new AP-Ipsos poll asked whether it should be legal for doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to help terminally ill patients end their own lives – a practice currently allowed in Oregon but in no other U.S. states. Forty-eight percent said it should be legal; 44 percent said it should be illegal.<\/p>\n