Tom Marzen, a leading pro-life attorney who monitors end of life issues, told LifeNews.com that Congress should pass "an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act that specifically states that assistance in suicide is not a 'legitimate medical purpose.'"
Dorothy Timbs, legislative counsel for National Right to Life's medical ethics center agrees..."Nothing in the decision suggests that Congress lacks the constitutional authority to amend the Act to make clear that federally controlled drugs may not be used to kill people," Timbs explained.
Here are some reactions from today's editorials:
- Seattle Post Intelligencer
It was troubling to see Chief Justice John Roberts cast his first dissent in this case, a toady vote siding with the Bush administration's abuse of executive power. Also troubling is the prospect of Judge Samuel Alito, should he be confirmed by the Senate, joining Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as a fourth vote in sympathy with such executive excess.
- The Oregonian
bq. Roberts let Oregon down this week.....Roberts joined Scalia's peevish dissent. While this vote doesn't define Roberts, it's a troubling indicator of the chief justice's mind-set -- and of the court's creeping direction.... [It] should heighten concerns about the direction of the court as it fills with Bush-appointed justices. Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's current nominee to the Supreme Court, appears to be even more sympathetic than Roberts to broad notions of federal executive power.
The Bush Administration was also guilty in this case of abandoning for political purposes what ought to be its own federalism principles. Mr. Ashcroft had reversed a policy of the Clinton Administration in order to invalidate the Oregon law at the behest of social conservatives who had lost the political battle over assisted suicide in that state. Results-oriented jurisprudence isn't any more admirable from the right than it is from the left.
A poll on the LA Times website right now has 91% of responders agreeing with the Supreme Court decision.
And from bloggers:
Jane at Firedoglake weighs in:
I find it highly ironic that per the Supreme Court terminal patients can now end their lives but they can't smoke weed to make their pain more bearable.
And how about that charmer John Roberts, eh? The one who said only months ago he probably wouldn't vote against assisted suicide -- and then he did.
Kevin Drum:
Federalism is at least a principled conservative position on which reasonable people can disagree. But the current crop of "conservative" justices is more interested in figuring out excuses to impose their own version of morality on the rest of us than they are in any meaningful application of conservative principle. I eagerly await thundering editorials from the right inveighing against judicial activism.
