(Washington Post) – Other issues created more controversy during her confirmation hearings, but one of the insufficiently appreciated effects of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s elevation to the Supreme Court could be to fortify existing high court doctrine on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, specifically a 23-year-old precedent denying that terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to either one.
The public appears increasingly sympathetic to such laws, but Barrett would join Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh as Trump appointees who, as of the time they were nominated, had given implicit but clear indicia that they would vote no on a “right to die,” just as all nine justices did in the 1997 case of Washington v. Glucksberg.
Gorsuch published a book in 2006 questioning European euthanasia laws and defending then-existing state laws in the United States prohibiting doctor-assisted suicide. CONTINUE