The Supreme Court is now set to review Oregon’s Right-To-Die initiative. We’re the only state in the nation that allows a doctor to prescribe drugs that will peacefully end a terminal patient’s life. We passed it by voter initiative in 1994 and reaffirmed it in 1997. Janet Reno never intervened, but former Attorney General Crisco Ashcroft did, which led to this case.
Newsday.com – National News: The Bush administration changed course in November, 2001. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said he would seek to punish doctors who prescribed lethal medication for their dying patients, regardless of the wishes of Oregon’s voters.
‘I hereby determine that assisting suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose…and that prescribing, dispensing or administering federal controlled substances violates the Controlled Substances Act,’ Ashcroft said.
Seems odd, doesn’t it? You have someone who is on death’s door, someone facing the prospect of a final couple of months in severe pain, someone with no hope of recovery, and all they want to do is to pass on at a time of their own choosing, without pain, with a modicum of dignity. What decent human being could refuse that request? Oh, yeah, right, we’re talking about John Ashcroft.
See, the problem is that terminally ill people spend a whole bunch of money on medical care and prescription drugs. Big Pharma doesn’t want to see anyone checking out early and taking their profits with him. Oh, and we can’t have the medical marijuana people thinking that states can just go about deciding that doctors can respond to their patient’s medical needs by prescribing drugs that the feds don’t like. If we let the states get away with regulating suicide drugs, then they have precedent to regulate nausea-relieving, pain-controlling, spasticity-reducing, appetite-enhancing flowers that don’t have GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, or Merck labelled on the stalks.
There is no freedom if you have no sovereignty of self. These alleged conservatives who cry about government getting into their pockets seem to have no problem getting government into our wombs and deathbeds. Hunter S. Thompson’s last act on Earth makes more sense each passing day. That’s the conservative answer — you wanna die? there’s plenty of guns and ammo to go around, but you really only need one gun and one bullet.
These people won’t extend to a dying human the humane courtesy they’d extend to Old Yeller.
