Posted on 11/10/2001 4:48:10 PM PST by Pokey78
The attorney general takes on Oregon.
WHEN OREGON VOTERS legalized assisted suicide in 1994, state regulators had a problem. They wanted to authorize doctors to prescribe barbiturates as killing agents. But the federal government regulates the use of these drugs under the Controlled Substances Act, and federal law did not permit their use to intentionally kill.
Ordinarily, that would have been that. The feds, not the states, have the final say about what would and would not be a proper use of drugs governed by the Controlled Substances Act. Unfortunately, Oregon's assisted suicide law went into effect during the Clinton years, when principle and the rule of law were rarely allowed to impede political expedience. Thus, it was hardly surprising when former Attorney General Janet Reno declared that she would not enforce federal law against Oregon's doctors who assisted patient suicides, thereby permitting a state to nullify the federal proscription against using controlled substances to kill.
Proponents of assisted suicide were thrilled. Their Oregon beachhead secure, they expected to spread their dark agenda nationwide. Instead, they have been turned back by a potent alliance of liberal disability rights activists, conservative pro-lifers, members of the hospice movement, medical professionals, and advocates for the poor and minorities. Only seven years after the Oregon law passed, the landscape has dramatically changed: Jack Kevorkian is in prison for murder; initiatives attempting to legalize assisted suicide failed in Michigan in 1998 by 71-29 percent and in Maine last year by 51-49 percent; and the U.S. Supreme Court, followed by Florida and Alaska high courts, all ruled that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide.
And now, assisted suicide in Oregon has taken a body blow. Last Wednesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum to Asa Hutchinson, the new head of the DEA, reversing Reno's decision. Oregon regulations will no longer override the Controlled Substances Act. "Assisting suicide is not a 'legitimate medical purpose'" under the meaning of that act, Ashcroft stated, and doctors who assist suicides act "inconsistently with the public interest." Accordingly, even though assisted suicide remains legal in Oregon, the DEA will now be authorized to revoke the federal prescribing license of any doctor who uses controlled substances lethally rather than medically.
Predictably, Oregon has sued, its politicians bellowing that their "state's rights" have been violated. But this is nonsense. Ashcroft based his decision on the recent 8-0 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, which ruled that while California was free to legalize medical marijuana all it wanted, the state's decision did not prevent the federal government from enforcing federal law proscribing the use of marijuana for any purpose.
Not surprisingly, a federal judge has temporarily restrained implementation of Ashcroft's decision, questioning why the attorney general waited months before changing Justice Department policy. But it is hard to see how any court can prevent Ashcroft from enforcing federal law unless it openly flouts the Supreme Court ruling in Cannabis Buyer's Club.
Of course, this is the Ninth Circuit, the most reversed court in the country, so the road is likely to be bumpy. But the Supreme Court sits at the end of that road, and thus, it is probably only a matter of time before the Controlled Substances Act is enforced uniformly in all 50 states.
Oregon euthanasia activists warn that Ashcroft's memo will create a "chilling effect" for doctors who wish to aggressively treat pain. But this is baseless fear-mongering. Ashcroft has already written to the president of the Oregon Medical Association assuring him that Oregon doctors "have no reason to fear" that prescribing "controlled substances to control pain will lead to increased scrutiny by the DEA, even when high doses of painkilling drugs are necessary." Moreover, states that have outlawed assisted suicide, while at the same time making it clear that aggressive treatment of pain is a proper medical act, have seen tremendous per capita increases in the prescription of morphine to treat pain. For example, in 1996 Rhode Island outlawed assisted suicide. Since then, per capita morphine use has increased 164 percent. Michigan's similar ban resulted in increased morphine use of 20 percent since 1998. Similarly, Louisiana banned assisted suicide in 1995 and has seen a 26 percent increase in per capita morphine use.
Any lingering worries about chilling effects could be easily thawed by passing the Pain Relief Promotion Act, legislation that would explicitly make aggressive pain control a legitimate medical purpose under the Controlled Substances Act. Unfortunately, passage of this important bill was thwarted last year by Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who feared the pain relief legislation would do what Ashcroft has just done--reassert a federal penalty for doctors who use controlled substances to engage in assisted suicide. Wyden saw to it that the legislative clock ran out on the pain relief act.
Now that Ashcroft has properly restored federal standards in the use of controlled substances, there is no further excuse to thwart passage of the Pain Relief Promotion Act. If Wyden and the other backers of Oregon's assisted suicide regime really care about suffering patients, this time they won't stand in the way.
Wesley J. Smith, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, is the author of "Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America."
To everyone who has this knee-jerk reaction against the Oregon law: when you have to hear the one you love moaning in pain because he's had cancer so long that the painkillers have stopped working, or they don't work because the cancer has spread to every organ and nothing will help - then come back to this thread and tell us all how holy you are because you had the moral fiber to let your loved one die in agony.
I don't think he was talking to you or about you. But surely you can compose a more Christ-like reply than this.
For you to compare Christianity to the creeps in Afghanistan is laughable--you live in the freeist society in the world and it's because of Judeo-Christianity not in spite of it.
I didn't see him compare Christianity to anything.
I don't see the harm in paying paying people for a service, so I don't see the harm in paying those doctors who participate in the euthanasia, assuming we would make it legal. Of course I realize you oppose that.
I share your concern about non-consensual "euthanasia" and the slippery slope towards that from the consensual euthanasia that I support. (BTW, I wonder whether these Oregon requests from terminal patients would decline if their doctors didn't fear losing their licences for effectively treating pain, a result of the War on Drugs). I too don't want doctors deciding who has sufficient worth to continue and who doesn't, but I doubt the Oregon law gives them that power.
Without getting into the abortion debates, I share your fear of the slippery slope, reinforced by reports from the Netherlands of non-consensual euthanasia. So no, I don't simply shrug and say it couldn't happen here, because it could happen here. I want to see safeguards, for sure, so that it won't happen here.
Who owns your body???
You? or the state???
If you own your own body, then you have the absolute right to end your life at any time for any reason...
If you do not own your own body, then you are a slave...
It is that simple...
And God has absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever...
May you or one you love never suffer his fate. He was a good and Godly man, and didn't deserve his end.
If you think that he must, got to Hell.
Let me better phrase it as "I don't see where the Constitution empowers the fedgov to enforce anyone's version of Christianity or any other religion."
Actually, both euthanasia and abortion are clearly and unequivocally forbidden by the Constitution:
No state shall ... deprive any person of life ... without due process of law- not that anyone gives a rat's ass about that yellowing old piece of parchment...
It's not the fifth amendment; it's the fourteenth amendment, brought to you by your very own fledgling Republican party. Doctors are instruments of the state; when they kill, the state kills. [I say doctors to distinguish them from physicians, who are forbidden to kill, by the Hypocratic Oath.]
If you could pretend, for the sake of argument, that doctors are not instruments of the state, but are simply private citizens, then a sister clause from that same fourteenth amendment would require the states to prosecute, convict, and execute doctors for their euthanasias and abortions, just as the states prosecute, convict, and execute all other first degree murderers:
No state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.The fourteenth amendment requires every state to punish every murderer equally for his murders, i.e., by symmetry, No state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal punishment of the laws.
The fourteenth does not tell a State how to define a crime, only that it can’t establish different standards for different individuals.
Right - and by symmetry, a state can't undefine a crime only for certain individuals.
One of the reasons that we are no longer a nation of laws is that certain beautiful people, like William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, can commit crimes, such as perjury in a federal court, and walk away scot free, while other, more normal people, like me, would go to jail for committing those same crimes.
In the absence of equal punishment by the law, equal protection of the law is meaningless.
I was absolutely correct in saying that the Oregon vote has not been overturned. Just asked your Attorney General, only as it applies to Federally regulated drugs has any connection been made. Ask any Doctor and he will tell you that there are plenty of drugs to end a life that do not fall into this category. This all started because Oregon voted for apiece of legislation that was not complete in it’s meaning and function. Oregon thought it was so smart making it loose and free forming. It does not even specify the type or types of drug to be used, so how can there be any direct correlation.
As for Federal involvement in State issues or any issue, the Feds should not be doing a lot of things. I am not to be directly taxed by the Feds, at least in the original Constitution. However I still pay Federal tax, it is the LAW. So it is with the Law on Federal Drugs. I understand the Issues fully, but we cannot just break whatever laws we don’t agree with. If you want the Feds out of your business, do something legal about it. Read my profile, I am just as pissed about fed involvement. But you just can’t break the law.
Pain Management is very effective, very few people suffer from unbearable pain.
You in Oregon are the ones who brought the State into the Issue. Many Conservatives warned you about bringing the state into the issue. But no, you just had to have the nanny state control death. Anyone could have killed himself or herself before the law – Painlessly I might add.
Oregon State is the one controling when, where, how and why. Not the Feds on this one. Oregon is the one getting into the peoples business.
The latter though does present serious problems as regards the problem of making sure the choice is made freely by the patient.
B. Is he to turn a blind eye to all issues except the terrorist? That would be wrong and negligent. That is something Reno would do.
Whether you agree with the Law or not, it is a federal law and I expect him to enforce it. That is his job. He is not in the position to decide which laws to enforce. You do like it, then get your Legislators to change the Law.
Ex. 20:13 "You shall not murder.”
Murder is the taking of a human’s life. Suicide is the taking of one’s own life, thus self-murder. Suicide presents a problem for Christians in that ones final act is a sin for which one cannot ask for forgiveness. Agnostics/atheists apparently don’t have this problem. Our existence is a gift from God. Suicide is a rejection of that gift.
In our post Christian society, assisted suicide will rapidly become an economic issue as can be seen the Netherlands experiment.
If we don't have the right to end our own lives then we don't have the right to extend our own lives. If you get sick don't take meds or use our hospitals.
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