FDT and Cruzan
My conversation with another Thompson supporter last night generally yielded this conclusion: the question of legalized euthanasia (i.e., the status of food and water as medical treatment, which may be interrupted in a non-dying patient on the same basis that life support or other treatment may be interrupted in a dying one, should be settled on the state rather than the Federal level.
With which premise I have no problem. Trouble is, though, that Cruzan v. Director- the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which legally defined food and water as medical treatment (thus eliminating the distinction between letting nature take its course and actively killing the patient) usurped the right of the states to decide that for themselves.
The only remedy is at the Federal level. The case is "on all fours," as the lawyers say, with Roe v. Wade.
I'm not ready yet to give up on Fred Thompson. But I do think that his thinking on Roe, if he is consistent, also ought to apply to Cruzan. And I see the intensely personal nature of end-of-life decisions as no more intensely personal than those governing a woman's decision to abort her child.
Shouldn't those decisions be treated the same way? If it's the states which should set the ground rules for one, shouldn't that also be the case for the other?
With which premise I have no problem. Trouble is, though, that Cruzan v. Director- the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which legally defined food and water as medical treatment (thus eliminating the distinction between letting nature take its course and actively killing the patient) usurped the right of the states to decide that for themselves.
The only remedy is at the Federal level. The case is "on all fours," as the lawyers say, with Roe v. Wade.
I'm not ready yet to give up on Fred Thompson. But I do think that his thinking on Roe, if he is consistent, also ought to apply to Cruzan. And I see the intensely personal nature of end-of-life decisions as no more intensely personal than those governing a woman's decision to abort her child.
Shouldn't those decisions be treated the same way? If it's the states which should set the ground rules for one, shouldn't that also be the case for the other?
Comments
But someone recently told me "An amendment banning abortion is simply not going to pass in this universe."
Would that not also apply to an 'on all fours' SCOTUS decision allowing a person to be murdered by withholding food and water as a medical treatment?