Active euthanasia is the effort of a person to cause his or her own death or the death of another. In all forms of euthanasia "suicide, assisted suicide and mercy killing "the medical cause of death is not disease or injury but the fatal action taken. Although people sometimes equate euthanasia only with mercy killing, it is more accurate to distinguish mercy killing from the other forms of active euthanasia as well as from passive euthanasia. Passive euthanasia intends death by withholding available medical treatment or other care that clearly could enable a person to live significantly longer. Death is intended but not medically caused by the person performing passive euthanasia. Another expression for this practice is -intentionally fatal withholding-. Using this expression can be helpful, since it is more explicit about what is in view then is the term passive euthanasia. In the case of mercy killing (active euthanasia) the physician usually induces death by injecting a lethal drug into the patient. In the case of intentionally fatal withholding (passive euthanasia), the physician withdraws treatment already begun (such as a respirator) or decides not to begin treatment (such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and lets and avoidable death take place. Euthanasia is always the intent to bring about someone's death. .
Throughout North America, committing suicide or attempting to commit suicide is not a legal offense. However, helping another person commit suicide is a criminal act. One exception is the state of Oregon, which allows people who are terminally ill and in intractable pain to get a lethal prescription from their physician. This is called "Physician Assisted Suicide" or PAS. Assisted suicide has been illegal in most states since the mid-eighteenth century when the practice was banned, either directly by statute or by court decision. Depending on the degree of assistance, assisting a suicide is often prosecuted as a form of homicide.
