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  • Title: Assisted suicide ruling is flawed. A federal court decision has potentially grave implications for all healthcare workers.
    Author: Moses MF.
    Journal: Health Prog; 1994 Dec; 75(10):20-3. PubMed ID: 10138585.
    Abstract:
    Last May a federal judge struck down Washington State's law against assisted suicide on the grounds that it violated the U.S. Constitution. The judge ruled that just as a citizen has a right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment, so does he or she have a right to request a physician's assistance in committing suicide. The court also concluded that because the decision to end one's life is as intimate and personal as a decision to have an abortion, assisted suicide must also be constitutionally protected. The court is mistaken. A "right" to assisted suicide is described nowhere in the text of the Constitution. Assisted suicide, furthermore, does not occupy a fundamental place in American history and traditions, and therefore cannot be deemed implicit in the constitutional guarantee of due process. Indeed, just the opposite is true: Our history and traditions actively discourage and prohibit assisted suicide. The asserted right to assisted suicide finds no support in cases involving either abortion or termination of medical treatment. Two terms ago, the Supreme Court relied heavily on stare decisis in upholding the abortion right, but there is no line of precedent for a right to assisted suicide. Not all "personal" decisions are constitutionally protected, so the personal nature of suicide does not dispose of the question of its constitutional status. Finally, in equating refusal of medical treatment with suicide, the federal court in Washington State ignores a long line of authority that recognizes a fundamental difference between the two.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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