January (Web-only) 2006

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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 ...