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Article: Court-assisted suicide. (appellate court's ruling on Washington state physician-assisted suicide law)(Editorial)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- March 22, 1996
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There is "a constitutionally recognized `right to die."' So ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on March 6 in Care in Dying v. Washington. The opinion, breathtaking in the expansiveness of its claims and the tendentiousness of its argument, might just as well have found a constitutional right to kill. The decision, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, upholds a lower court's ruling that a Washington law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause as developed in abortion decisions from Roe v. Wade to Planned Parenthood v. Cagey. Now, Judge Reinhardt writes that "a competent, ...