January 18, 2006 6:15 AM

A culture of death? Or simply a victory for the sovereignty of the individual?

Justices Uphold Oregon Assisted-Suicide Law: In a Blow to Administration, Ruling Paves Way for Other States to Follow Suit

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s law on physician-assisted suicide yesterday, ruling that the Justice Department may not punish doctors who help terminally ill patients end their lives.

Voters in Oregon have twice gone to the polls to approve the state’s Death With Dignity Act. They have twice expressed their conviction that an individual with a terminal illness and living in constant pain deserves the right and the ability to be the ultimate judge of whether or not the time has come to end their life. It’s one thing for those of us in good health to harbor an opinion about the sanctity and inviolability of life, but I’d be willing to bet that if you’re fighting an incurable disease and living in pain 24/7 you might just have a different take on things.

I can understand and appreciate the viewpoint of those Social Conservatives who profess to value the sanctity of life above all else. Nonetheless, do they, or any of us, have the right to dictate how a person who is suffering lives or dies? What interest does the state have in ensuring that someone enduring unknowable and unimaginable pain and suffering continues to live in that state, only to suffering a painful, perhaps excruciating death?

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft exceeded his legal authority in 2001 when he threatened to prohibit doctors from prescribing federally controlled drugs if they authorized lethal doses of the medications under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act.

The ruling struck down one of the administration’s signature policies regarding what President Bush calls the “culture of life” and lifts the last legal cloud over the state’s law, which is unique in the nation. It also frees other states to follow in Oregon’s footsteps, unless Congress acts to the contrary.

This is not about a “culture of life” or, conversely, a “culture of death”. It’s about who ultimately gets to decide: a government beholden to the agenda of the Social Conservatives that brought it to power, or the individual who is doing the suffering and dying. While no civilized society should condone wanton and indiscriminate suicide, what about the terminally ill and infirm? What about the individual who has come to grips with their death sentence and simply wishes to depart this Earth on their own terms? What about the person who wants to die with a degree of dignity as opposed to wasting away, possibly in agony and without control of their faculties?

Conservatives reacted angrily to the ruling. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit litigation group founded by Pat Robertson, called it “a disturbing and dangerous decision that can only lessen the value of protecting human life.”

The reaction of Conservatives, beyond being laughable, is just plain mean-spirited. In an effort to blindly protect their precious agenda, they are willing to consign the sick and infirm to a degree of pain and suffering they cannot even begin to imagine…if they were to even care in the first place.

Conservatives would have us believe that Oregon is populated by people just looking for ways to off themselves. The reality is that relatively few people have taken advantage of the Death With Dignity Act, and the law does have a specific process that must be followed before a doctor can prescribe a fatal dose of medication. The Death With Dignity Act is not a license for the unstable and hopelessly depressed to blithely end their miserable, pointless existence by any means available. No, regardless of the bleatings of Conservatives, this is not about protecting life. It’s about protecting the individual and their right to decide what is best for them when faced with something none of us want to face- our impending demise.

A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll released Jan. 5 found that 46 percent of Americans support a right to assisted suicide while 45 percent oppose it. Assisting suicide is a crime in 44 states, including Maryland, as well as the District. It is a civil offense in Virginia. In three states — North Carolina, Utah and Wyoming — the law neither prohibits nor permits assisted suicide. Ohio’s Supreme Court has decriminalized assisted suicide, but state regulations do not condone it….

I’d like to be able to say that the Supreme Court’s ruling was about the right to die with dignity, but, sadly. that would be hoping for far too much. The Court has already held that there is no right to end one’s own life. Right; I suppose you need a license for that sort of thing.

Although frequently described as a “right to die” case, Gonzales v. Oregon , No. 04-623, was not, strictly speaking, about the constitutional right to end one’s own life. The court has already ruled, in 1997, that there is no such right and did not revisit that holding yesterday.

Instead, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy noted in the majority opinion that the question was whether Ashcroft acted in accordance with the Controlled Substances Act when he issued an “interpretive rule” in 2001, declaring that assisting suicide is not a “legitimate medical purpose” for which federally regulated drugs may lawfully be prescribed. Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, has continued the policy.

Kennedy acknowledged that the case was partly a product of the national debate over end-of-life issues but noted that the “resolution requires an inquiry familiar to the courts: interpreting a federal statute to determine whether Executive action is authorized by, or otherwise consistent with, the enactment.”

Well, if nothing else, at least we now know that Chairman Ashcroft overstepped his authority in trying to achieve his ultimate goal of turning this country into a fundamentalist theocracy. It’s just too bad that Oregon is the only state enlightened enough to recognize that an individual should be free to live- and die- as they see fit.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 18, 2006 6:15 AM.

Oh...I always wondered how they did it was the previous entry in this blog.

Well, the horses are all gone, so we might as well shut the barn door is the next entry in this blog.

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