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

Assisted self-destruction and the Supreme solicit   The Court upheld two state laws absolutely prohibiting aid suicide, stating that Washington states law does not violate constitutional guarantees of liberty (Washington v. Glucksberg) and that naked as a jaybird Yorks similar law does not violate constitutional guarantees of equal bulwark (Vacco v. Quill). Oregons law selectively permitting assisted suicide for certain patients had been found by one federal district court to violate equal safeguard 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 Justice Rehnquist state in his absolute majority popular opinion in Glucksberg Lee, of course, is not before us... and we offer no opinion as to the validity of the Lee courts reasoning. In Vacco v. Quill..., however, decided today, we hold that newfound Yorks assisted-suicide ba n does not violate the Equal 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 govern on the constitutionality of a law like Oregons.   The Court also said nothing about assigning this issue to state as hostile to federal jurisdiction. In reviewing the Nations longstanding tradition against assisted suicide, it cited federal enactments much(prenominal) as the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997 on base state laws. Illustrating the governments interest in protecting terminally ill patients, the Court favorably cited an earlier decision upholding the federal Food and Drug Administrations ascendancy to protect the terminally ill, no less than other patients, from life-endangering drugs. Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. at 2272, quoting United States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 558 (1979). What the Court did rule is that laws prohibiting assisted suicide (whether state or federal) argon constitutionally valid and serve several important and legitimatise 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 almost every State -- indeed, in almost every western commonwealth -- 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 preservation of all human life.