Our intrepid Attorney General, having too much time on his hands and too many conservative patrons to ignore, has decided to take firm, decisive action the one issue that’s on everyone’s lips these days.
Doctor-assisted suicide.
Reversing a Reno-era dirctive, Ashcroft has ordered DEA agents to go after doctors who participate in such acts — not to prosecute them in court (where sympathetic juries have tended to return Not Guilty verdicts), but by yanking their ability to prescribe federally controlled substances (most medication). This is primarily intended to counter Oregon’s assisted suicide bill, passed by the voters a few years ago.
Under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, doctors may provide – but not administer – a lethal prescription to terminally ill adult state residents. It requires that two doctors agree the patient has less than six months to live, has voluntarily chosen to die and is able to make health care decisions.
At least 70 terminally ill people have ended their lives since the law took effect in 1997, according to the Oregon Health Division. All have done so with a federally controlled substance such as a barbiturate.
That’s right, folks. The death of those seventy people over a five year period is such a prominently heinous crime that the Attorney General has no choice but to unleash the full force of the Federal Government on such evil-doers.
We can all sleep safer tonight.
(Via InstaPundit)