And another “strict guideline to prevent abuse” bites the proverbial dust. Oregon has just eradicated the requirement — always weak, as Brittany Maynard proved by just moving there — that a patient accessing assisted suicide be a resident of the state. From the AP story:
Oregon will no longer require people to be residents of the state to use its law allowing terminally ill people to receive lethal medication, after a lawsuit challenged the requirement as unconstitutional.
In a settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Portland on Monday, the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Medical Board agreed to stop enforcing the residency requirement and to ask the Legislature to remove it from the law.
Advocates said they would use the settlement to press the eight other states and Washington, D.C., with medically assisted suicide laws to drop their residency requirements as well.
We know this drill, right? A lawsuit is filed in which supposedly adverse legal sides really aren’t “adverse.” Soon the friendlies in government agree to the terms requested by the plaintiffs as a settlement. Easy, peasy. And no real way to prevent it.
So now, just like happens with “suicide tourism” in Switzerland, suicidal people from all over the country and the world can flock to Oregon to be made dead. Sure, they supposedly have to be terminally ill, but that is a loosely enforced requirement already. And assisted-suicide appointments can be held virtually. At some point the terminal illness guideline will fall, too — as soon as the euthanasia movement deems it politically expedient.
