Letting the dying choose how to bid farewell.

Critics including Attorney General John Ashcroft have tried to block Oregon's Death With Dignity law on the ground that it undermines the sanctity of life. But this law [which permits terminally ill residents of Oregon to end their own lives with doctor-prescribed lethal medication] deserves to be upheld. When it was proposed in 1994, opponents argued that the terminally ill would feet pressure to commit suicide so they wouldn't be a burden to their families. But such abuses do not appear to have occurred. Oregonians seem increasingly content with the experiment--partly because of its limited scale. The most recent figures, from February 2003, showed that 171 people had hastened their deaths since the law took effect in 1997. All in all, the law has provided the world with a model for how to offer dying people a real choice about how they should bid farewell to the world. It forces us to examine what is special, about human life. The answer, I think, is the autonomy and dignity inherent in our individuality--in making hard decisions for ourselves and determining our own destinies. Oregon honors that vision of what is sacred about life.