The following excerpt is from Compassion In Dying v. State of Wash., 49 F.3d 586 (9th Cir. 1995):
Seventh. At the heart of the district court's decision appears to be its refusal to distinguish between actions taking life and actions by which life is not supported or ceases to be supported. This refusal undergirds the district court's reading of Cruzan as well as its holding that the statute violates equal protection. The distinction, being drawn by the legislature not on the basis of race, gender or religion or membership in any protected class and not infringing any fundamental constitutional right, must be upheld unless the plaintiffs can show "that the legislature's actions were irrational." Kadrmas v. Dickinson Public Schools, 487 U.S. 450, 458, 108 S.Ct. 2481, 2487, 101 L.Ed.2d
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Against the broad background of moral experience that everyone acquires, the law of torts and the law of criminal offenses against the person have developed. "At common law, even the touching of one person by another without consent and without legal justification was a battery." Cruzan, 497 U.S. at 269, 110 S.Ct. at 2846. The physician's medical expertness is not a license to inflict medical procedures against your will. Protected by the law of torts, you can have or reject such medical treatment as you see fit. You can be left alone if you want. Privacy in the primordial sense in which it entered constitutional parlance--"the right to be let alone"--is yours. See Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
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