David Goodall, the 104-year-old longtime advocate for assisted suicide who traveled from Australia to Switzerland for just such an opportunity, died “peacefully” on Thursday.
Philip Nitschke, of the assisted suicide advocacy group Exit International, announced Goodall's passing on Twitter.
Goodall traveled to Switzerland to die because assisted suicide is illegal in Australia, National Public Radio reported. He was an Exit International member and the group helped arrange his death.
Goodall had attempted but failed to commit suicide on his own earlier this year. He secured a fast-track appointment with assisted dying foundation Eternal Spirit in Basel.
"It's my own choice to end my life ... and I look forward to that and am grateful to the Swiss medical profession to make that possible," Goodall said on Wednesday, per NPR.
Goodall did not have a terminal illness but said his quality of life had deteriorated and that he wanted to die. He said he resented that he was forced overseas to die
According to the Exit International website, Goodall requested that his body be donated to medicine and that his ashes be spread locally. In his final wishes, he said he didn’t want a funeral or remembrance service.
"David Goodall is exactly the sort of member that Exit is made of and is proud of," Nitschke said. "It was a wonderful experience to know him and be so intimately involved in his final weeks of life, especially after David’s 20 odd years of membership of Exit International."
In the U.S., seven states allows physician-assisted suicide – California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington according to Huffington Post.com. Washington, D.C. also allows for it as well.
Generally, the assisted suicide laws provide that mentally competent, terminally ill adults can request a prescription medication from their cooperating physician that would hasten their death, according to the website Death with Dignity. The patient then voluntarily takes a self-administered lethal dose of the medication to end their life.
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