The Supreme Court today ruled that Doctors in Oregon who use prescription medicine in the furtherance of the State's assisted suicide law may not be punished by a recent law passed through the Bush administration. The law was passed as part of Ashcroft's attempt to "punish" doctors who assist terminally ill patients to die - patients who are diagnosed with less than six months to live according to two doctors and who are of sound mind.
The ruling went 6-3, so it's unlikely that if Alito was on bench during deliberation that the outcome would have been different. Interestingly, in his dissent, Justice Scalia noted, "[the Court's ruling] is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business. It is easy to sympathize with that position."
I agree with the decision. I don't like that the Bush administration, having lost on the subject of assisted suicide once, tried to undermine it through other means. Dirty tricks. Sometimes it's better to just let it be.
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