SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS OREGON'S SUICIDE LAW

ap ^

[SoFloFreeper]

BREAKING ON THE AP WIRE:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

[Polybius]

"Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Federal Government should decide such matters just as nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Federal Government should decide issues of abortion."

The issue of abortion IS a constitutional matter -- that is murder.

Prosecution for murder has always traditionally been dealt with under State law.

If you kill the first person you randomly meet on the street today, you will be tried in a State court under State law unless he happens to be a Federal employee on Federal duty at the time.

It is such stretching of the Constitution that made abortion a "constitutional issue", took it out of state hands and made abortion a "constitutional right" when, in fact, the Constitution is silent on the matter of abortion.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"I never mentioned the Bill of Rights much less lied about them so calm down."

---

In post #289, you wrote:

"However that's not in the Constitution which states that our rights come from 'We The People'."

If you weren't referring to our individual rights inexhaustively enumerated in the Bill of Rights, please enlighten me as to what you meant. And since nowhere in the Constitution does it say that our rights come from "We the People," then, sorry to tell you, but you have been lying about the Bill of Rights.


"My point is that, whatever understanding there may have been, the text of the UCS does not declare that our Rights come from God."

---

You are correct that the text of the Constitution does not mention the origin of our rights, just as the Constitution doesn't say that the Freedom of Speech is necessary for ordered liberty, but would you deny that the Founders understood the Freedom of Speech to be necessary for ordered liberty? Every document written a few years befor and after the Constitution made clear that the Founders understood that our individual rights came from God, not from Man. Read the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the "Anti-Federalist Papers," the accounts of Justice Joseph Story, and everything else written in the U.S. in the late 18th and early 19th centuries about our individual rights.

[trisham]

The doctors are murdering their patients, in contradiction of every principle that underlies civilization and the medical profession.

****************

Agreed. It's murder, and I for one would not choose any doctor who would agree to "assist" in a "suicide".

[bvw]

Your reply speaks for itself, and it ain't pretty.

[highball]

A right to life is not a duty to live.

Precisely. Well put.

[highball]

Every document written a few years befor and after the Constitution made clear that the Founders understood that our individual rights came from God, not from Man.

Ah, but now you're getting into the murky waters of "intent." If that's your rationale, Jefferson's "wall of separation" is solid and binding.

Better, I think, to go with what the Constitution actually says. Nowhere does it invoke Biblical authority for anything.

[Bushbacker]

was a rhetorical not a legal document.

___The Declaration presented the justification for the rebellion andd the establishment of the US...it therefore contains the basic values of the Founders...which states that government doesnt grant us rights,
they belong to us by right of "nature and nature's God" and that human beings have right to overthrow a government that tries to deprive us of those rights.




And if you want to go by what Jefferson himself actually thought (he disapproved of the Constitution as a whole I believe....thought it gave too much power to the Fed) he was opposed to celebrating Thanksgiving because he thought it was too religious.

____Most Americans didnt feel that way...Jefferson was not representative..



And I can bring up the Treaty of Tripoli while we're at it which states that we are not a Christian country.

_____We are not a Chrisian country, but we are country composed mostly of Christians...and our cultural and political values flow from that.

[antiRepublicrat]

Your reply speaks for itself, and it ain't pretty.

I just think it strange that you would support violating peoples' rights in order to force them to exercise their rights.

[bvw]

I do not support violating any rights, including the right not to have the meaning of my words deliberately distored. Therefore I encourage to see the duty of interpretating the words of others (including mine) in a fair and good meaning.

[TKDietz]

I'm not angry, I just strongly disagree. I do not agree that rights always carry with them duties. Legal rights and duties are two separate and distinct things. You have a right to freedom of speech, but no duty to say anything. You have a right to testify at a trial when you are accused of a crime, but no duty to testify. You have a right to bear arms, but within that right is no duty to bear arms. You have the right to peaceably assemble, but no duty to assemble.

You are making a big jump. What you are saying is that because you have a legal right to life, that you have a legal duty to live. That's just wrong. Suicide is against the law most places, but that is not because we have a right to life. It's against the law because suicide is harmful to those left behind, especially those to whom you owe obligations of care or monetary or contractual obligations. It's also harmful to those who have to clean up after you, bury you, and so on. And it's also illegal because people tend to believe for religious reasons that it is wrong.

We all have rights. We own those rights. They are ours. We can assert them or we can waive them, but no one is supposed to be able to take them away from us, not without due process of law at least. This assisted suicide thing is entirely different then something like abortion. Abortion impinges on the right of someone to live, without their consent. This person whose life is taken is not given the chance to defend their right to life. There is no hearing, no due process of law. A person who commits suicide though is giving up their right to live. They waive it. It seems that Oregon's law requires that they do so knowingly and voluntarily. Perhaps they will burn in Hell for making that choice, but that is between them and God.

[ohioWfan]

There is nothing whimsical about this law.

When human beings seek to take God's will and timing about death and place it in human hands, it is the work of man's limited thinking, and in error.

You haven't answered the question as to why you believe the three conservative Constitutionalists on the Court agree with me, and not you.

Do these men have an inferior understanding of the Constitution than you do? Or could it be that you let your own personal feelings about dying interfere with your understanding of the Constitution?

In the Terri Schiavo case, the preponderance of freepers who wanted to let her die, felt that way based on personal experience, rather than on law.

The Constitution was based on the Creator's law, and supports life.

[ohioWfan]

A right to life is not a duty to live.

Precisely. Well put.

But the presence and participation of the doctor makes it murder.

According to the Supreme Court, as of yesterday, it is now legal to murder an innocent person in the state of Oregon.

[highball]

"But the presence and participation of the doctor makes it murder."

No, it does not.

"Murder" is a legal term, and the State of Oregon changed its law to not forbid doctors from carrying out the express wishes of their patients in this matter.

[antiRepublicrat]

I do not support violating any rights, including the right not to have the meaning of my words deliberately distored.

Then let's get this straight from the beginning. You said life is an inalienable right, and that the government can't declare suicide legal. You also said "directly carries the duty of acting to uphold those rights," and later agreed to the spreading of this concept to other rights besides life.

How can I not interpret that to mean that we MUST exercise our rights, because somehow every right equals a duty to exercise it?

The logical conclusion of that position is rediculous, as it infringes on the rights of the people in the name of their rights.

[ohioWfan]

"Murder" is more than a legal term. It was a moral and ethical term long before anyone made it 'legal.'

Taking another human life is wrong. And any society that wants to remain strong must honor that.

America is in deep trouble because of abortion, and now at the other end of life, the liberal death culture is making inroads.

As someone earlier on the thread said........what if the patient is in a state of depression, and could come out of it? You can't recover from depression if your doctor has murdered you.

[Borges]

Our political values are mostly secular. The three primary influences on the U.S. Constitution were the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta and English Common Law. Those three have a far greater bearing on the document then the Bible.

[Gondring]

Believe it or not, this may open the door for the overturning of Roe V. Wade and the subsequent replacement of that decision in the hands of the states.

But don't you recall that in the case of Mrs. Schaivo, so many people--including Randall Terry--were calling for Federal intervention to prevent exercise of her rights. Why should it go to states when the loud opponents of Roe v. Wade like the Feds handling everything? :-(

[bvw]

You listed some very good reasons why a legal system must make suicide illegal, yet the primary one is still that Life is a Duty.

The English legal commentator Blackstone found that suicide "is insulting to God and to the king" (Bill Long, see his Blackstone on Homicide III). To both G-d and King is a man's life due when called for service. Here, without a monarch, a man's life is due G-d and his country, and a man may not presume to give it up on his own.

[Canard]

"This contradiction is in fact the basis of thomas' dissen in this case: he wanted consistency from the Court."

He has been as inconsistent though in dissenting against both decisions. If he were being consistent, then he would vote in favour of maintaining Roe v Wade in any future decision, on the same basis as his dissent in this case. Can't see that happening though, so it just looks like another case of working backwards from the preferred outcome to find some way of justifying it.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"If that's your rationale, Jefferson's "wall of separation" is solid and binding."

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Given that Jefferson had NOTHING TO DO with the text or ratification of the original Constitution or the Bill of Rights (he was in Paris as our Minister to France), I don't see how his correspondence would illuminate us in any way.


"Better, I think, to go with what the Constitution actually says. Nowhere does it invoke Biblical authority for anything."

---

I've already said that the text of the Constitution does not invoke Biblical authority. But neither does the text deny that our rights were endowed to us by God. Remember, it is the God-given nature of our rights that makes it illegitimate for any man to take them away from us. It is perversive to assume that the Founders believed that our rights came from Man or that the Bill of Rights *created* any rights rather than merely *declaring* them.