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To: EternalVigilance

Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the first amendment and, through incorporation through the 14th Amendment, is applied to the states as well. There is NOTHING in the constitution that either prohibits nor advocates the voluntary taking of one's life. It is an issue left to the states, much like abortion should be.


655 posted on 01/17/2006 1:38:39 PM PST by Clemenza (Smartest words ever written by a Communist: "Show me the way to the next Whiskey Bar")
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To: Clemenza

Try reading the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments.

They protect innocent human life.

Well, at least they once did.


663 posted on 01/17/2006 1:46:29 PM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: Clemenza

"There is NOTHING in the constitution that either prohibits nor advocates the voluntary taking of one's life."



The 5th and 14th Amendments prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of life without due process of law. To the extent that states facilitate the taking of human life through "assisted suicide" of infirm people (whose informed consent may be difficult to obtain) it could be argued that states are depriving people of life without due process. While the DP Clause is generally considered a "negative right" (it prohibits states from doing something, not requiring states from doing something), I think it would be deemed to apply if a state passed a law allowing parents to kill children up to the age of 6; similarly, if the state does not set up a mechanism in which the person being killed has received due process, an assisted suicide law could be struck down.

Of course, that would also apply in the case of abortion laws, which is why pro-life members of Congress (such as Jesse Helms IIRC) have suggested passing a law pursuant to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment providing that the word "person" includes any member of the species homo sapiens from the moment of conception, and prohibiting states from depriving the life of any person without due process of law.


669 posted on 01/17/2006 1:49:33 PM PST by AuH2ORepublican (http://auh2orepublican.blogspot.com/)
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To: Clemenza
There is NOTHING in the constitution that either prohibits nor advocates the voluntary taking of one's life.

What the OR law allows is not the voluntary taking of one's own life, it allows murder by a physician using a specific method of killing. If a suicidal old person in OR asks you to smother him with a pillow you will be prosecuted for murder if you grant his request. But if you have "MD" after your name and give him a drug which will kill him you won't be prosecuted for anything. What's the difference? On a moral level it's still murder whether the OR law prohibits it or not.

I suppose another way to look at the issue is this, if the American people want to continue to legalize the murder of pre-birth babies, which apparently they do, they may as well legalize the murder of old sick people as well. I just wonder how long it will be before any type of "undesirable" or unwanted human being can be legally murdered in America the way they were in Nazi Germany.

700 posted on 01/17/2006 2:19:17 PM PST by epow (Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, II Cor 3:17)
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