Law Commons^™

The Death-Prolonging Procedures Act And Refusal Of Treatment In Missouri, Sandra H. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

Missouri’s Death-Prolonging Procedures Act of 1985 represents an effort to ensure that an individual’s choices regarding medical treatment will be honored, even if the individual becomes incompetent. This article considers the Act’s limiting structure and examines the effect of these limits on the effectiveness of the Act in providing a legal right to refuse medical treatment.

Following an introduction, Part II describes the limiting structure of the Act. Part III considers the way in which the Act’s limitations relate to its binding effect.

First, an individual’s declaration applies only to "death-prolonging procedures" and only if the individual is terminally ill. …