Free Euthanasia Essays: The Church and Assisted Suicide :: Free Euthanasia Essay

Church groups wrote to all members of Congress urging support for the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 1998. Excerpts follow   Swift enactment of this economy is necessary due to a seriously flawed ruling by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno... The ruling asserts that Oregon, by rescinding its own civil and criminal penalties for instigateing the suicides of trusted patients, has established assisted suicide as a legitimate medical practice within Oregons borders -- and that the federal official government lacks any basis for disagreeing with this judgment. Under this ruling, however, federal intervention by the Drug Enforcement Administration in Oregon may well be warranted in cases where a physician fails to comply with state procedures regarding how and when to assist suicides. Federal law will protect the lives only of those deemed by the state to be ineligible for assisted suicide.   The Oregon assisted suicide law, in and of itself, poses an marvelous threat to human dignity and to equal protection of all citizens under law. While continuing to forbid assistance in the suicide of a progeny and healthy person, this law rescinds criminal, civil and professional penalties for a doctor who assists the suicide of someone he or she believes in good faith to have six-spot months to live. Ironically, once this good faith judgment is made it will never be proved wrong, because the patient will be dead from a drug overdose in a few days. Oregons discriminatory policy stigmatizes an entire class of vulnerable patients as having lives not worth protecting. For this reason it has been found unconstitutional by the only federal court to review Oregons law on the merits. See Lee v. Oregon, 891 F.Supp. 1429 (D. Or. 1995), vacated on other grounds, 107 F.3d 1382 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 328 (1997).   Current federal policy demands an increase penalty when the victim of a crime is seriously ill or otherwise unusually vulnerable (Uni ted States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual, p. 227, 3A1.1). How, then, can the federal government now place its penalties under the Controlled Substances Act to confirm and enforce Oregons discriminatory policy on assisted suicide -- where the vulnerable condition of the victim turns a crime into a legitimate medical practice?   Any states rights argument on this issue is contradicted by the plain language and intent of the federal Controlled Substances Act.