The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning in Gonzales v. Oregon, a case which tests whether the federal government can be forced to facilitate assisted suicide through the use of federally controlled drugs whenever a state no longer prevents assisting suicide as a matter of state law.
Vigorous questioning of both sides by the Justices suggested that key members of the Court are wrestling with the issues and have not clearly made up their minds about the case. Particularly noteworthy, however, was Chief Justice Roberts' observation that when Congress passed its law regulating narcotics and other dangerous drugs in 1971, Congress would never have assumed any state might legalize assisting suicide or that federally regulated drugs could legally be used for that purpose.
Roberts and other Justices noted that Oregon's claim that only states can determine what use of federally controlled drugs is "legitimate" would mean a state, by saying morphine can be used in high doses to make the user feel good, could effectively gut the federal law's ability to fight drug abuse. A number of Justices repeatedly challenged the state's argument that the uniform application of the federal law yields to widely varying standards in fifty different states.
"The Bush Administration has properly determined that federally controlled medical drugs should be used to heal and help, not to kill," said Burke Balch, J.D., director of the NRLC Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. "Most Americans do not want their federal government to be forced to facilitate euthanasia."
Source: Arizona Right to Life
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