Nathan Diament spent two years lobbying Congress to shut down Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. But when Bush administration officials called Tuesday to say they had done the job by administrative action, he was not only pleased but also surprised.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft has no business trying to overturn the voters’ will by sending federal drug agents after Oregon doctors who prescribe drugs to assist suicides.
Four patients joined in a legal motion brought today in Federal District Court here by Attorney General Hardy Myers of Oregon to impose a stay on the federal directive. A ruling on the state’s request is not expected until Thursday at the earliest.
The state of Oregon sued the U.S. government on Wednesday over a federal directive that essentially blocks the state’s assisted-suicide law.
Not long ago, a cancer specialist I know faced a situation that chilled those of us who care for people with terminal illness.
Siding with the State of Oregon, the only state to legalize assisted suicide, a federal judge issued an order here today that would temporarily block Attorney General John Ashcroft’s move earlier this week to overturn the law.
Oregon doctors can prescribe lethal medicines again to terminally ill patients who want to end their lives now that a judge has temporarily blocked a federal order that had essentially shut down the state’s unique assisted-suicide law.
By Earl Wettstein, President of Arizonans for Death with Dignity (a branch of Hemlock USA).
President Bush’s approval rating has peaked somewhere around 88% and will now begin a decline toward his Failure to Get Re-elected Day in November of 2004.
With his decision to unleash Attorney General Ashcroft on the Oregon Death With Dignity Law, he has gutted not only that law, but his presidency. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft effectively blocked Oregon’s landmark assisted-suicide law yesterday, authorizing federal drug agents to identify and punish doctors who prescribe federally controlled drugs to help terminally ill patients die.
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a new federal directive intended to thwart Oregon’s assisted suicide law.
Reversing the policy of his predecessor who supported the nation’s first assisted suicide law, Attorney General John Ashcroft said on Tuesday that doctors may not prescribe lethal doses of federally controlled substances to terminally ill patients.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on President Bush on Tuesday to quash any administration efforts to block Oregon’s doctor- assisted suicide law by rewriting federal drug enforcement policy.
