Both supporters and opponents of "death with dignity" were alike spurred by the case of an American woman who committed physician-assisted suicide this weekend, believing the case may ignite a shift in Japan's long-standing tendency to shun the topic as a taboo.
Each group remains opposed to the other, but they both expressed belief Tuesday that the woman's action and her self-confessed wobble at the eleventh hour strengthens their cases both for withholding medical treatment and for banning such action by law.
Brittany Maynard, aged 29 and suffering terminal brain cancer, took her own life Saturday by consuming lethal drugs prescribed by a doctor under Oregon state's "Death with Dignity Act."