I don’t know what the hell they do up there in Oregon. They’re kind of that simple-but-friendly neighbor who’s always fiddling around in their backyard or heading off on another road trip with a car full of hiking gear and fishing poles. They wave at you as you take out the trash but you’ve never gotten to know them and you certainly don’t know what it is they actually do.

But lately Oregon’s put away the Birkenstocks and slipped into a suit for a battle with the Supreme Court over yet another moral-based issue, leading me to believe that Oregon may not be the backwards one.

Since 1997, the state has had the only law in the nation allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with doctor-prescribed barbiturates, and since then 208 patients have made that choice. Oregon argues that “assisted dying,” as the state calls it, is legally a state regulated issue, but the Bush Administration feels that “assisted suicide” (their term) is taking it too far and is not a “legitimate medical purpose.”

We can prescribe weight loss pills for people too lazy to exercise and prescribe Viagra for people too old to get it up, but we can’t prescribe an end to bedridden days and hospital bills? The patients are terminally ill; they are going to die. The only thing they have control over is choosing when, and we can’t even grant them that? Considering only 208 terminally ill patients have chosen to end their lives in the 8 years since the law was enacted, it does not seem that Oregon’s residents are abusing their choice.

This is the first major case to be heard by new Chief Justice John Roberts and the oral arguments earlier this month demonstrated the division of the Supreme Court over the issue. A final decision won’t come for quite some time but California is one of many states anxiously awaiting the ruling and discussing “assisted dying” legislation of their own.

Like all other individuals’ rights, President Bush is against physician-assisted suicide, but this time I’m a little confused. Doesn’t God whisper in Dubya’s ear telling him to head out on “crusades” and kill innocent people? Doesn’t our president hail from Texas, land of the death penalty? I thought we liked killin’ folks.

In a time when individuals, war and natural disasters are killing enormous numbers of people left and right, life is a beautiful blessing that not everyone is so lucky to have. It may be the only possession that you will truly have a say in what you can do with it.

Despite a law deeming self-inflicted suicide illegal (we prosecute them after they’re splattered on the pavement), 30,000 people in 2004 took their own lives, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, for a variety of reasons, many of which are often emotional and shortsighted.

Obviously people commit suicide whether we want them to or not, but in the rare case of terminally ill patients their decision is difficult but realistic. It is cruel (and a bad habit of our country’s) to project one’s idea of right and wrong onto others, especially onto those who live every day without hope of ever truly living again. Permitting physician-assisted suicide does not make it a requirement; it is simply a choice and those who do not agree can choose accordingly.

Jen White can be reached at [email protected]