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Tuesday, January 17, 2006

 

Scalia Makes a Pouty Face

The Supreme Court took a big ol' dump on the Bush administration's shoes today.

*Deep, heavy sigh*

How much longer do you think they'll be doing that?

What they did, see, was to refuse to strike down Oregon's physician-assisted suicide laws. Oregon is the one place where doctors have the right to help people with illnesses that are terminal and qualities of life that are abysmal end their lives with some dignity. Personally, I completely fail to see the argument against this. "My God! If this law were to spread to other states, doctors would just start slaughtering people wholesale! Think of the carnage! No, no. It's much better that people who are spending every second of their existence in severe pain should be forced to live months longer."

Come on. Allowing people to control their own destiny in this way is not going to lead us down the slippery slope to Logan's Run, for Christ's sake. What is it that these conservatives want? "Look, if'n you want to kill yerself, you should do it the old-fashioned way and jest put a shotgun to yer temple. It was good enough fer mah grandma."

I'm not saying that suicide should be readily available to every idiot teenage goth kid. I'm not looking to market Doc Kevorkian's Li'l Black Pill over the counter or anything. But if your doctor feels that there is no hope for you; if every day is a repetition of the same intense pain and there's no effective way to manage it; if you've lived enough of your life to peacefully let it go, then why the fuck should born-agains in the executive branch be able to stop you?

Don't, please, think that I'm some suicide-happy jaggoff. I've said before that I think suicide is a stupid, selfish thing to do. (I believe that I said the only exception to this rule is samurais.) I still stand by this point of view in most cases. But...I know that I would have a tough time living every day with the kind of non-stop pain that some people have to go through. Inflict that pain on people like fundamentalist Christian John Ashcroft, who introduced the challenge to this law while he was still Attorney General, and you might see them do a quick about face.

Ah, religion. So many wonderful, wonderful ways it can fuck things up.

 

 
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