As long as a state wishes to behave in the correct, prescribed, Bush*co, fascist manner (for instance, to discriminate against people with disabilities, or to disenfranchise voters of color), then Asscroft's Dept. of "Justice" will support them.
If, however, a state dares to stray from the fold and actually attempt to
grant a right to its own citizens, the Crisco Kid will promptly haul them into court.
As it happens, there are many reasons to oppose this particular legislation: much of it was written by a powerful HMO (Kaiser); there are concerns that the "right to die" may become a
duty to die, particularly among those with significant disabilities; and others:
http://www.notdeadyet.org/docs/notlegal.htmlThe very small number of people who may benefit from legalizing assisted suicide will tend to be affluent, white, and in possession of good health insurance coverage. At the same time, large numbers of people, particularly among those less privileged in society, would be at significant risk of harm....
Perhaps the most significant problem is the deadly mix between assisted suicide and profit-driven managed health care. Again and again, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and managed care bureaucracies have overruled physicians' treatment decisions. These actions have sometimes hastened patients' deaths. The cost of the lethal medication generally used for assisted suicide is about $35 to $50, far cheaper than the cost of treatment for most long-term medical conditions. The incentive to save money by denying treatment already poses a significant danger. This danger would be far greater if assisted suicide is legal.
Assisted suicide is likely to accelerate the decline in quality of our health care system. A 1998 study from Georgetown University's Center for Clinical Bioethics underscores the link between profit-driven managed health care and assisted suicide. The research found a strong link between cost-cutting pressure on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients, were it legal to do so. The study warns that there must be "a sobering degree of caution in legalizing in a medical care environment that is characterized by increasing pressure on physicians to control the cost of care" (Sulmasy et al., 1998).
The deadly impact of legalizing assisted suicide would fall hardest on socially and economically disadvantaged people who have less access to medical resources and who already find themselves discriminated against by the health care system. As Paul Longmore, Professor of History at San Francisco State University and a foremost disability advocate on this subject, has stated, "Poor people, people of color, elderly people, people with chronic or progressive conditions or disabilities, and anyone who is, in fact, terminally ill will find themselves at serious risk" (Longmore, 1999).That being said, however,
it is none of Asscroft's business to decide this. He obviously has no interest whatever in protecting people from the ravages of greedy HMO's, only in pandering to his right-to-life* cronies.
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