Right to Life
donate Books CDs HOME updates search contact

Neil Gorsuch Defends His Opposition
to Assisted Suicide

Steven Ertelt
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch defended his opposition to assisted suicide yesterday during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

Gorsuch has written a book specifically opposing assisted suicide saying that the intentional taking of human life is always wrong. Gorsuch wrote: “All human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Gorsuch hearings

Facing Feinstein's protests (below), Gorsuch is calm & firm in his stand against assisted suicide

feinstein hearings

He defended that view yesterday saying that there’s a difference between intentionally causing someone’s death and a patient dying naturally after receiving appropriate medical care to alleviate their pain. That defense came during questioning from pro-abortion Senator Dianne Feinstein.

“You make the statement that there is no justification for having anything to do with the end of someone’s life, encouraging the end of life,” Feinstein said, referring to a book Gorsuch wrote. “Well, California just passed an End of Life [Option] Act” legalizing assisted suicide.

“I, in my life, have seen people die horrible deaths, family, of cancer, when there was no hope,” the California Democrat said, “and my father begging me, ‘Stop this, Dianne. I’m dying.’”

Gorsuch said he stands by his opinion in his book regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Cruzan when it decided that “an incompetent person does not have the same constitutionally protected right as a competent person to refuse life-sustaining treatment.”

“What I wrote in the book was I agree with the Supreme Court,” Gorsuch said, adding that he understood where Feinstein was coming from.

“Your father, we’ve all been through it with family, and my heart goes out to you, it does. And I have been there with my dad. And others. And at some point you want to be left alone. Enough with the poking and the prodding. ‘I want to go home and die in my own bed in the arms of my family.’ And the Supreme Court recognized in [Cruzan v. Director] that that’s a right in the common law, to be free from assault and battery, effectively,” he said.

Gorsuch said he supports efforts to alleviate pain, but could not support assisted suicide.

“Then, Senator, the position I took in the book on that was anything necessary to alleviate pain would be appropriate and acceptable, even if it caused death, not intentionally but knowingly,” Gorsuch said. “I drew a line between intent and knowingly. And I’ve been there. I have been there.”

This article was first publishedon LifeSiteNews.com on March 23, 2017

Share

Blason de Charlemagne
Follow us



Posted March 24, 2017


Related Topics of Interest

Related Works of Interest


A_civility.gif - 33439 Bytes A_courtesy.gif - 29910 Bytes A_family.gif - 22354 Bytes
C_Formation_B.gif - 5946 Bytes Button_Donate.gif - 6240 Bytes C_4Temp_B.gif - 5500 Bytes
C_CatWay_R.gif - 6561 Bytes C_RCRTen_B.gif - 6810 Bytes C_Myth_R.gif - 6892 Bytes