Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Oh, that Snarky Scalia

The Supreme Court did a good thing when it upheld Oregan's assisted suicide law.

It seems like reasonable public policy to me, and the article says that only 208 people in the whole state have used it since 1997, making it actually very rarely used.

Roberts, BTW, voted with Thomas and Scalia to dissent. Of those, I was most surprised to see Thomas as I thought his libertarian instincts might kick in on this one.

In the dissent, Scalia wrote "If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death."

CC

And here's the Post's version.

1 comment:

LaReinaCobre said...

I voted for the Assisted Suicide Law when it was on the ballot here, and felt that it was really people's right to die "with dignity." I've had second thoughts since attending a workshop on ableism and abilities put on by Devorah Greenstein of the UUA. This was part of an anti-oppression conference that I facilitated at. She used a presentation that was fairly recently created and really wanted our feedback on it. It blew me away, and provided me with an opportunity to reflect on how our society values life and ability, and devalues those who are deemed "unable." I also learned some valuable statistics on the use of the Oregon Assisted Suicide Law, and the original backers of it. Unfortunately, I do not have those statistics on me now, but I can try to find them later.

According to at least several organizations for people with disabilities, this law originated out of a desire for lower medical costs. It's something I want to learn more about. If this is true then I can say that this is not the way the ASL was put forward to the public in Oregon at all.

One link: www.notdeadyet.org