Free Republic

... In the 1960s, when the first right-to-die organizations began helping terminally ill people end their lives in Switzerland, the Swiss gave broad support to a practice widely viewed as a personal choice. Backed by the world's most liberal right-to-die laws, assisted-suicide groups have since then quietly helped thousands kill themselves. Lately, the increasingly controversial activities of Dignitas and its founder, Ludwig Minelli, are pushing even the famously tolerant Swiss too far, prompting calls for changes in the nation's assisted-suicide law. Mr. Minelli has long played the agent provocateur of Switzerland's right-to-die movement, most notably because his group helps the...

WASHINGTON - Newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday sharply questioned a lawyer arguing for preservation of Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, noting the federal government's tough regulation of addictive drugs. The 50-year-old Roberts, hearing his first major oral argument since succeeding William H. Rehnquist at the helm of the court, seemed skeptical of the Oregon law, and the outcome of this case was as unclear after the argument as before. At the outset, Roberts laid a barrage of questions on Oregon Senior Assistant Attorney General Robert Atkinson before he could finish his first sentence. "It's a tough case," noted...