Even though most conservatives are deploring the Supreme Court's decision on the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, and even though three very bright justices dissented, I think the Court came to the right conclusion.
If the matter of choice in abortion should be thrown back to the states to decide what their laws will be, as I think it should, then it's hardly consistent to have the federal government stepping in to stop a person from choosing the time and manner of his own death. If the one is a matter for states to decide then so must the other be.
Attorney General Ashcroft was stretching his constitutional authority when he threatened to revoke prescription writing privileges of doctors who prescribe drugs for terminally ill patients who wish to end their suffering, the Court decided. Whether doctors, as a matter of professional ethics, should do this is a different question than whether the Constitution allows the Federal government to prohibit them from doing it.
Now it will be interesting to see how the six justices who voted to give states the right to decide what the law should be in such personal, private matters - matters in many respects analogous to the issue of whether a woman should have the right to kill her unborn child - will vote when the question of returning abortion law to the states comes before them.
