Free Euthanasia Essays: Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court :: Free Euthanasia Essay

Assisted Suicide and the coercive Court   The Court upheld cardinal state laws absolutely prohibiting assisted self-annihilation, stating that Washington states law does not bollix up constitutional guarantees of liberty (Washington v. Glucksberg) and that New Yorks similar law does not vitiate constitutional guarantees of equal protection (Vacco v. Quill). Oregons law selectively permitting assisted suicide for certain patients had been found by one federal district judicial system to violate equal protection that ruling was not before the Supreme Court. 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). As Chief arbitrator Rehnquist said in his majority opinion in Glucksberg Lee, of course, is not before us... and we offer no opinion as to the validity of the Lee romances reasoning. In Vacco v. Quill..., however, decided today, we hold that New Yorks assisted-suicide ban doe s not violate the fit Protection clause. Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 2262 n. 7 (1997) (emphasis added). To this day no appellate court in the country has ruled on the constitutionality of a law worry Oregons.   The Court also said nothing about assigning this have a go at it to state as opposed to federal jurisdiction. In reviewing the Nations longstanding customs duty against assisted suicide, it cited federal enactments such as the Assisted Suicide financing Restriction Act of 1997 alongside state laws. Illustrating the governments interest in protect terminally ill patients, the Court favorably cited an earlier decision upholding the federal Food and Drug Administrations authority to protect the terminally ill, no slight than other patients, from life-endangering drugs. Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. at 2272, quoting coupled States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 558 (1979). What the Court did rule is that laws prohibiting assisted suicide (whether state or federal) are constitutionally valid and manage several important and legitimate interests. Excerpts follow   Washington v. Glucksberg The question presented in this case is whether Washingtons prohibition against causing or aiding a suicide offends the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We hold that it does not...   In virtually every State -- indeed, in almost every western democracy -- it is a crime to assist a suicide. The States assisted-suicide bans are not innovations. Rather, they are longstanding expressions of the States commitment to the protection and rescue of all human life.