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Christianity Today has published a news story and an editorial on the Supreme Court's Oregon v. Gonzalez decision. Here's how other prolife organizations are responding to the decision.

Christian Medical Association
With narcotics free to be used for purposes that have no medical benefit whatsoever, the 'do no harm' requirement of medicine—a long-standing protection for patients—is lost. This lethal violation of medical ethics erases a prohibition that has protected patients since the time of Hippocrates. Before Hippocrates, patients couldn't know for sure if their doctor would heal them or kill them. This decision moves the practice of medicine one step closer to ethical mayhem.

The ethical foundation of medicine is crumbling under the Court's jackhammer.

Doctors are no longer required to only prescribe sedatives to comfort and heal; now they can prescribe them to kill. Assisted suicide does not give more power to the patient. It gives more power to the doctor—to be judge, jury and assistant executioner.

As Oregon has already shown, the so-called safeguards don't work. With the patient dead and the doctor not talking, who knows what really happened?

Killing is not a legitimate medical purpose. Legalized assisted suicide gives doctors the right to help kill, and in our money-driven healthcare system, that's dangerous. The cheapest form of medical care is always a handful of lethal drugs.

—David Stevens, executive director

The Controlled Substances Act was designed to prevent using drugs for non-medical purposes in every state--not every state except Oregon. When a state or a doctor uses such drugs not to heal or to relieve pain, but simply to kill, that is not a medical purpose. Killing doesn't require medical training or compassion.

What we need is not more power for doctors who use drugs to kill their patients, but more power for doctors who use drugs to heal and comfort their patients. Over time, the face of healthcare will change dramatically if doctors are granted the power to kill. It is a change we will regret.

—Gene Rudd, associate executive director

Focus on the Family Action
Today's ruling forces the federal government to sit idly by while drugs are misused by doctors and patients in Oregon. Physician-assisted suicide is certainly not 'patient care and treatment'—it is the promotion of self-killing.

Proponents of physician-assisted suicide will, no doubt, claim this ruling rejuvenates their tired argument that there is "dignity" in taking your own life—an argument that Americans have increasingly rejected. The truth is that the court did not condone physician-assisted suicide at all. Today's decision was simply about the federal government's authority to regulate narcotics, not a justification of assisted suicide.

—Carrie Gordon Earll, senior analyst for bioethics

American Center for Law and Justice
This is a disappointing decision that is likely to result in a troubling movement by states to pass their own assisted suicide laws. It is unfortunate that a majority of the court stripped the federal government of an important safeguard to ensure that federally controlled narcotics could not be used by licensed physicians to take the life of a patient who wants to commit suicide. This is a disturbing and dangerous decision that can only lessen the value of protecting human life.

—Jay Sekulow, chief counsel

Liberty Counsel
When a physician participates in a person's suicide by administering controlled substances, the line between healer and executioner is blurred, and the sanctity of life is lost. America should not become like Sweden, where patients wonder whether a physician with a syringe brings life or death. Since controlled substances are regulated under federal law, permitting such drugs to be used to end life compels all Americans to indirectly become complicit in euthanasia.

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January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50