http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060117/...sisted_suicide

Roberts dissented, along with Thomas and Scalia. Their argument strikes me as weak; in his dissent, Scalia wrote: ""If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death."

I don't see that as clear at all. Doctors prescribe drugs all the time to limit suffering. Hastening death for those who wish it is quite in line with that goal.

Also, there was this:

Yep.

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

It's another to go after the law while claiming to support state's rights. They crack me up with that stuff.

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See y'all after the election. Good luck to whichever Republicrat you are voting for.

What is it about Dems and libs that they choose death over life? Unless of course, they are talking about someone who is on Death Row for committing a horrible crime....whom they defend as having the right to life. In that particular situation....libs and Dems would say, "The state/fed gov't should not be in the business of deciding who lives and who dies."

But in the case of a terminally-ill patient, they believe the state should be able to let doctors administer pills that will kill that patient.

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

Not too sure what you mean by "they". I support states rights and an individual's rights. I'm certainly not one of "them" if you mean libs or dems. How about letting us live by our own decisions?

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Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness ~Thomas Paine

What is so hard for you to figure out, JP5. Social liberals believe in the right to life as much as any of you cons. But what you believe in seems to be the requirement of life.
If I have the choice between a death with dignity and minimal suffering for myself and my family or a artificial life hooked to a machine for maximum family suffering, I will choose the former. What gives you or Scalia the right to tell me I have to be kept alive as long as possible regardless of the quality of that life. Especially since you guys would also put all the bills on my family and not allow any kind of funding to make my last days more bearable. Actually you'd have no issue with letting me die slowly if my family couldn't afford it.
So take your "right to life" hypocrisy and I think you know where it belongs.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

So, you mean that I should have been allowed to take a lethal dose of pills to my Dad in a Nursing Home when he wanted to die?

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

I am 100% philosophically consistent (of course I'm not a Dem either). But the hypocrisy of the "state's rights" crowd is pretty clear.

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See y'all after the election. Good luck to whichever Republicrat you are voting for.

How hard is it? We're not talking about the state just offing people (which is what the death penalty is); we're talking about terminally ill patients who have been found sane and stated repeatedly that they no long wish to live.

Isn't my life my own? Don't I have the right to decide whether I wish to continue it? Having decided that I don't, isn't it better for me to go out peacefully, with family by my bedside, rather than resorting to a gun or a rope or jumping off a bridge?

Social conservatives make this mistake all the time. They see a *symptom* they don't like and try to ban or restrict it, rather than addressing the underlying cause:

1. High divorce rate: Ban divorce, rather than strengthen marriage, and who cares what the consequences are (more bad marriages, more children coming out of bad marriages, more adultery, etc.)

2. Abortion: ban abortion while teaching only abstinence, rather than improving family planning (for adults) and empowering our children with the knowledge they need to make their own decisions. And who cares what the consequences are (such as higher teen pregnancy rates, more abused children, etc.)

3. Assisted suicide: Ban it, and who cares what the consequences are (such as prolonged suffering, resort to other methods of suicide, increased emotional trauma for the patient and their family, etc.).

Social conservatives repeatedly choose the *most* invasive form of intervention, which often is also the *least* effective.

Here's a concept: My life is my own. I should be able to end my own life if I wish. I should be able to end my own marriage if I wish. I should be able to decide for myself, with all the information at my disposal, whether to engage in sex and whether to use contraceptives.

If you don't believe in assisted suicide, then don't do it. If you don't believe in divorce, then don't get divorced. If you don't believe in premarital sex, then don't do it and teach your children why it is wrong/harmful. if you don't believe in contraceptives, then don't use them.

But leave the rest of us alone.

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

First of all.....such decisions between doctors and families are made every day. You can already let it be known....through a legal document called "Physicians Directive" that you don't want to be kept alive artifically. When both my sister and my Mother were dying of cancer.....we had "Do Not Resusitate" orders for the doctors and nurses to follow. That meant, they would take no extraordinary measures to keep them alive. But they were kept out of pain....as they slowly died....by at first, self-administered doses of medicine and then by pain medication administered by nurses.

But actually giving someone a lethal dose of medicine ....making that decision to kill them......is a whole other thing. That goes against what medicine and doctoring is supposed to be about. That goes against their oath to "do no harm." When my Dad....who had suffered with Parkinson's disease for 20 years----ended up in a Nursing home......he once asked me to bring him his gun. Had I done something like that, I would have been brought up on charges. But.......he didn't really mean it, as he told me later that he didn't really mean it. And we would have missed out on lots of good conversations that we had......had I done so. So......terminally ill people can feel like dying one moment....and change their minds the next day. These should not be OUR decisions.

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

Good point.

Very true. But it's also funny that they do so while yelling about small government. What is bigger than a government forcing me to live? My life is the one thing that is clearly my own and yet they even want control over THAT. (*)(*)(*)(*).

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See y'all after the election. Good luck to whichever Republicrat you are voting for.