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Last week, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote in Oregon v. Gonzales, struck down the right of the federal government to prohibit doctors from prescribing lethal doses of medication to patients who want to commit suicide. The court was weighing Oregon's controversial, voter-approved Death with Dignity Act, which applies to patients who have been diagnosed as terminally ill and who have six months or less to live.

The federal Controlled Substances Act, however, permits the government to permit a drug's use only for a "legitimate medical purpose." According to a CT news report, "In 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a directive 'that assisting suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" … and that prescribing, dispensing, or administering federally controlled substances to assist suicide violates the CSA.' "

Apparently states now have the right to decide whether suicide is a "legitimate medical purpose."

Absent a push in Congress for a law specifically targeting euthanasia (not likely given public sentiment related to last year's Terri Schiavo case), expect more states to enact such legislation now that the high court has given them the green light.

This is a return to the paganism of ancient Rome, when the old were left to die. Yes, sometimes pulling the plug is the only compassionate option we have, such as in cases of brain death. But expect the pressure to increase on those with much less dire conditions to seek their own demise.

As Diane Coleman of the disability rights group Not Dead Yet notes, "Making suicide easy and socially approved for people who . . . feel like burdens on their families, is discrimination against a socially devalued group. Assisted suicide is not a benefit; it's a threat." Indeed, a report on assisted suicides under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act found that in 47 percent of the cases, one of the motives in the decision was "concern about being a burden on others."

In the Netherlands, which legalized euthanasia in 1995, old people also feel pressure to end it all. Arno Heltzel of the Catholic Union for the Elderly supports "voluntary euthanasia," but even he acknowledges the existence of "social pressure" in Holland toward old people because of high medical costs. "Old people have to excuse themselves for living," Heltzel told The Wall Street Journal. "When they say that all of their friends are dead, people say, 'Maybe it is time for you to go too,' rather than, 'You need to find new friends.'"

The Oregon law also tempts doctors to violate their Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm." According to David Stevens of the Christian Medical Association, "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."

Beyond all this, we seem have forgotten that suffering often brings blessings to those who are trained by it, especially followers of Christ. As James wrote to suffering believers, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Pain, which C.S. Lewis called "God's megaphone," is a necessary part of life in this fallen world.

Robertson McQuilkin resigned in 1990 as president of Columbia Bible College and its graduate school to care for his wife, Muriel, who was in the grip of Alzheimer's. McQuilkin told me that one night he was wondering why the Lord had removed him from public ministry.

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January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50