Laws in California, Texas, and Virginia permit clinicians to stop life-sustaining treatment without the consent of the patient or her family.
If the patient is dependent upon, for example, dialysis or mechanical ventilation, then unilaterally stopping it will cause the patient's death. In other words, the laws in these three states give physicians the right to say when "enough is enough."
Oddly, of these three states, only California gives an analogous right to patients. Only in California do terminally ill patients not dependent upon life-sustaining treatment have a right to medical aid in dying. Only in California do these patients have a right to hasten their death when they determine "enough is enough."
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