Ashcroft Resists the ‘Right to Die’

Re “Ashcroft Wants Oregon Suicide Law Blocked,” Nov. 10: President Bush and the religious conservatives should leave the “death with dignity” debate alone. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer three years ago, my mother rapidly declined from an active 58-year-old businesswoman to a helpless victim of paralysis as the cancer spread to her brain.

Confined to a bed without control of her arms, legs, bladder or bowels, she cried out every day for us or her nurses to put an end to her misery. With no hope for recovery, she simply wanted to end the horror and die with dignity. Because of current laws outside of Oregon, she instead had to suffer like this for months. Most of the 170 people who have legally been assisted with death in Oregon have been cancer victims. The religious zealots fighting the right to die need to learn the reality of the situation and stop encroaching on the rights of those who don’t share their views.

Marc Luber

Los Angeles

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The United States is losing a great protector in Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, though lefties who loathe him would be loath to admit it. Fortunately, he is taking one last stand -- a resolute one against assisted suicide. As a psychologist who understands the susceptibility of those who have lost the will to live, I regard this act as an act of assisted homicide. Ashcroft will go down in history as a central player in the war on terror and the struggle for justice.

Bruce L. Thiessen

Bakersfield

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Ashcroft has long sought to punish those seeking to minimize chronic or agonizing suffering through the use of marijuana for medical purposes, or through doctor-assisted suicide, as in Oregon. Because his policies necessarily impose terrible pain on his victims or those who would help them, they render Ashcroft a practitioner of sadistic behavior.

Sadism denotes deliberate, excessive cruelty. Whatever rationale Ashcroft advances for his behavior (his often-touted “states’ rights” won’t be one of them), nothing can belie the cruel effect of his policies. Those who support his actions must be confronted by the fact that his policies are exactly what sadists, whether self-righteous or not, would recommend. Is that really the company we wish to keep?

Roger Carasso

Northridge