Whether the doctors were actually forbidden from saving her life or not, I don’t know – mightn’t her depression have impacted her competency to refuse live-saving treatment? — but they believed they were and the result is now irrevocable.

The story calls this the first case of a Living Will used to commit suicide.  How can we know this?   Perhaps it’s only the first obvious case.

The point here:  these are powerful legal documents, and Congress is poised to create a government-run health care system which will pay doctors to encourage patients to execute them.  Think of the perils.  People who are sick or in pain are inherently vulnerable.  They are also often depressed.  It would not take much to persuade them to sign away their right to future care.  Remember, the Hemlock Society drafted this section of the heatlh care bill.  I wonder what they think of the death of poor Kerrie Woolterton.