To Live, Or Not To Live: That Is The Question
Terminal illnesses affect many people every year. Some patients simply cannot bear the pain. In 1994, Oregon passed the Death With Dignity Act (DWDA) which authorized physicians to prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances to terminally ill patients with only 6 months to live; this is referred to as physician assisted suicide. The DWDA consists of a list of procedures that a patient must undergo in order to receive assisted suicide. Once the patient has met all the requirements, the patient is given the lethal doses and passes away before the previous estimated time of death of six months.
However, in 1970, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was passed in order to regulate drugs. The CSA classified controlled substances into five different categories, schedule 1 being the worst substances. The U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft declared in 2001 that Oregon’s DWDA violated the CSA, and Ashcroft threatened to revoke medical licenses if assisted suicide was practiced. The questions at large is whether Ashcroft has the power to declare that the DWDA violated the CSA, whether State law can undermine Federal law, and can law take away a human’s right to life.
The District Court of Oregon issued an injunction against Ashcroft, and in favor of Oregon. The Ninth Circuit agreed with the District Court. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 in favor of Oregon but for different reasons than the District Court. The majority opinion did not think the statute gave Ashcroft authority to overrule how Oregon determined the appropriate use of medication that were not themselves prohibited.
The minority opinion argued that the ruling went against the reasoning in Gonzales v Raich and therefore the Sup...
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... speak for herself. Schiavo’s husband filed a motion to remove the feeding tube, but Schiavo’s parents argued she was conscious. The case was settled by previous case like the Cruzan v Missouri case which argued whether or not the Due Process clause permitted “Cruzan’s parents to refuse life-sustaining treatment on their daughter’s behalf” (oyez). The Cruzan case was ruled 5-4 in favor of Missouri because “under the Due Process Clause, incompetent persons were not able to exercise such rights” (oyez). This ruling affected the Schiavo case because Schiavo’s parents and husband argued whether or not Terri Schiavo would have wanted to die. The final ruling for the Schiavo case was to remove the feeding tube because Terri Schiavo was able to communicate her wish to discontinue treatment. The Supreme Court upheld her decision as it is her right to refuse treatment.
In this case, the Supreme Court decision in reversing the decision of the trail court. Although the suspects were conducting an illegal crime, the officers were reckless in the procedures in collecting the evidence. In this case, if there was a report or call concerning the drug activities in the apartment, being that the Police Department was conducting a the drug sting, it would have justified the reasoning behind the officers kicking the door in and securing suspects and evidence.
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
In February of 1990 a woman named Terri Schiavo collapsed at home suffering cardiac arrest in her home in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was resuscitated but had severe brain damage because she had no oxygen going to her brain for several minutes. Terri was severely brain damaged and in a vegetative state but could still breathe and maintain a heart beat on her own. After two and a half months and no signs of improvement, impaired vision, and the inability to move her arms and legs she needed a feeding tube to sustain her life since she seemed to be in a persistent vegetative state. For 2 years doctors attempted speech and physical therapy with no success. In 1998 Schiavos husband claimed she would not want to live in that quality of life without a prospect of recovery so he tried several times over the course of many years to pull the feeding tube so she could pass. Bob and Mary Schindler challenged and fought for a
Terri Schiavo is a forty year old women who had a severe heart attack 15 years ago which resulted in brain damage. She had no living will so there is no legal document of what she would have wanted if she became brain damage and couldn’t function on her own but her husband, Michael Schiavo, says that after 15 years of being on a feeding tube she would have wanted to die. The question is should he have the right to remove the feeding tube? Anybody who knows me will know that my answer is no! The reason for that is because I am a Christian and I do not believe in terminating someone’s life. It’s my belief that as long as a persons heart is beating he or she stills has life in them.
America is a champion of the freedom of choice. Citizens have the right to choose their religion, their political affiliation, and make personal decisions about nearly every facet of their daily lives. Despite all of these opportunities, one choice society commonly ignores is that of deciding how one’s life will end. Death seems like a highly unpredictable, uncontrollable occurrence, but for the past 17 years, citizens of Oregon have had one additional option not offered to most Americans in the deciding of their end-of-life treatment. Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), passed in 1994, allows qualified, terminally-ill Oregon patients to end their lives through the use of a doctor-prescribed, self-administered, lethal prescription (Office of Disease Prevention and Epidemiology, n.d.). The nationally controversial act has faced injunctions, an opposing measure, and has traveled to the Supreme Court, however it still remains in effect today.
“On October 27, 1997 Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.” (The Oregon Health Authority, 2010). Physician assisted suicide can be constructed to have reasonable laws which still protect against its abuse and the value of human life. Recent Oregon and U.K. laws show that you can craft reasonable laws that prevent abuse and still protect the value of human life. When one thinks of suicide, we think of a person who takes their own life. But in physician-assisted suicide, this is not the case. “In physician-assisted suicide, the patient self...
Did you know, about 57% of physicians today have received a request for physician assisted suicide due to suffering from a terminally ill patient. Suffering has always been a part of human existence, and these requests have been occurring since medicine has been around. Moreover, there are two principles that all organized medicine agree upon. The first one is physicians have a responsibility to relieve pain and suffering of dying patients in their care. The second one is physicians must respect patients’ competent decisions to decline life-sustaining treatment. Basically, these principles state the patients over the age of 18 that are mentally stable have the right to choose to end their life if they are suffering from pain. As of right now, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont have legalized physician assisted suicide through legislation. Montana has legalized it via court ruling. The first Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) became effective in Oregon in 1997. Washington and Vermont later passed this act in 2009, and Montana passed the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act in 2008. One concern with physician assisted suicide is confusion of the patient’s wishes. To get rid of any confusion and provide evidence in case someone becomes terminally ill, people should make an advanced care plan. The two main lethal drugs that are used during physician assisted suicide are secobarbital and pentobarbital. Appropriate reporting is necessary when distributing these drugs and performing the suicide in order to publish an analysis. Studies found a large number of people accepted this procedure under certain circumstances; therefore, physician assisted suicide should be legal in the United States because terminally ill patients over the age of 18 that are...
Sarasohn begins his article by acknowledging how Ashcroft valiantly takes the task of confronting the voters of Oregon to contemplate euthasasia during a week when anthrax and 9/11 were pressing issues for Ashcroft. In the article, Ashcroft states how using federally controlled substances, for the purposes of assisting suicide, violates the Controlled Substances Act (Sarasohn 8). The author states broadly how Ashcroft throws out the Oregon euthanasia law, not specifying the effect his challenge had on the law. It is important to note that Ashcroft’s reversal of the 1997 Supreme Court ruling does not prohibit medically assisted suicide in Oregon. However, it does forbid the usage of federally controlled drugs to kill a patient. The conclusion of the article talks about the Bush administration commending the decision and how Ashcroft sent out a DEA administrator to implement the new ...
Terri’s husband felt it will be best if she be taking off the feeding tube. He didn’t believe his wife would want to live the rest of her life with a feeding tube keeping her alive. Terri’s family didn’t feel like it was the best thing for her. Michael Schiavo felt her wishes should had been honored. He wanted the feeding tube to be removed which would cause Terri to die of malnutrition and dehydration. Her parents, did not want this, and wanted to keep their daughter alive no matter what.
Overall, the ruling in this case was a perfect interpretation of the Constitution. Despite opposition claiming that it is not addressed in the Constitution, too few rights are ever addressed in the Constitution of the United States. That is why there is a thing called Judicial Review. By utilizing judicial review, the interpreters of the law –Supreme Court, may make changes to policies and laws. Abortion, medicinal marijuana, and marriage fall under the umbrella of Equal Protection since they correspond to the rights and liberties of US citizens.
The Death with Dignity Act (hereafter DWDA) allows terminally ill patients who are Oregon residents to obtain and use the prescription from their physician to self-administer lethal medications. Under the Act, ending one’s life is in accordance with the law and does not constitute as suicide. The Death with Dign...
This has been shown in the fact that 1545 terminally ill patients have been prescribed the medication and only 991 have actually ingested it, thus ending their lives (Oregon Health Authority, 2016). Not only has the process of receiving the prescription been done with ease, but no individual has been required to ingest it and end their life, even though they may have already made a request for it. The DWDA has actually defied many doubts including the statement; the law could create states which have enacted the law to become “a destination for terminally ill patients seeking to die with doctor-prescribed drugs. In a decade of experience with the law, though, no such abuses have shown up” (Sandeen, 2013). Because of this false idea, some people still do not agree with the DWDA, however, because of the lack of evidence individuals are more likely to accept and support the act.
Glucksberg the right of physician assisted suicide is challenged. While not on the basis of if it was ok for the physician to assist but more so on the basis of is it legal to prescribe the amount of a drug needed to commit suicide. Washington presented a law to prohibit physician-assisted suicide. In turn was denied “ on the ground that it violated individuals, “right of privacy” and substantive liberty protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Chief Justice Rehnquist also delivered the courts opinion in this case. “The question presented in this case is whether Washington’s prohibition against “causing “ or “aiding” a suicide offends the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Which it does not. The choice of one person’s decision to end their life is constitutionally
Gonzales v. Oregon is a Supreme Court case that took place in 2005, with the verdict and dissenting opinions stated in January of 2006. The case is about the General Attorney’s ruling of a medical practice to be illegal. The Attorney General at the time was John Ashcroft, appointed under President George Bush Jr., who authorized that the usage of lethal doses of medicine on terminally-ill patients to be illegal under the Controlled Substance Act in 1970. The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 is a federal United States drug policy which limits the usage of certain medications in a variety of ways. (Oyez, n.d.).
United States of America. U.S. Supreme Court. Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School, 1 Apr. 2003. 13 Nov. 2013