Topic: Health Care
Patients Rights Amendment All persons are born with certain inalienable rights. Among these are the right to seek and obtain any reasonable treatment in a compassionate society.by Herodotus
(libertarian)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
1. All persons under the jurisdiction of the United States retain the natural right to seek and the opportunity to obtain the reasonable treatment of their own discretion. Neither the Federal government nor the several states may abridge this right without due process of the law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law;
2. The Congress shall have power to enforce, through appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article as it pertains to interactions with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
3. All powers not specifically vested to the Congress are retained by the States respectively.
America was created by virtue of our Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. However, this document is an expression of the natural rights of man, not a legal document establishing these rights. This is because there need not be a legal expression of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because no entity may deprive us, as humans, of them.
I believe that the progression of our society as one marked by reason, morality, tolerance, and compassion affirms our god-given right to pursue any medical remedy which can reasonably be applied by in a society.
The right to Life or the pursuit of a better life can never be obstructed by a truly just government. As expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(1948) Article 25 "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family."
Another natural rights document, The French Declaration of the Rights of Man(contributed to by patriot Thomas Paine), expresses the actions which can be the only pretext to deny a person their natural rights in its fourth article;
"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law."
In addition to these natural rights arguments for this type of Patients Rights amendment to the law of land, several realpolitik arguments add to the importance of such a sweeping expression of the rights of persons in the United States.
This amendment would end the prosecution of medical marijuana patients even in states which have not passed the necessary legislation. However, it will in no way force those states to enact any such legislation which their democratically elected representatives do not wish upon their society. It will simply allow patients with both a doctors prescription and personal possession of their medication to live without fear of persecution. It is imperative for a compassionate and reasonable society to allow patients to receive the medicine they require.
The second practical consideration to enact this amendment is that it is a necessary check on the increasing government role in our healthcare. Arguments for and against such government takeover are well documented, however, regardless of ideology, no American wishes to see government bureaucrats making their personal medical decisions for them. Through an expression of this in the US constitution the people may always resort to using the judicial branch to check the legislative and executive branches using one of the most powerful forces of liberty, judicial review.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Herodotus only and do not represent
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Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-10-21 16:59:26
Hi Herodotus,
Why so constrain an individual's right to seek any reasonable treatment? Your phrasing seems far more oppressive than today's choices. Today I am free to seek ANY treatment, reasonable or not, ANYWHERE, not just limited to a non-existent compassionate society. Anthropomorphizing "society" so it can take on your interpretation of compassion is just plain oppressive nonsense.
So long as there are individuals like you who are willing to crush diversity and impose their personal preferences on others I'll be opposing their right and undermining their ability to do so. Like this comment. It gets pretty hard to keep up the illusion of an "enlightened" advocate of compassion and liberty after being exposed as an advocate of oppression and force to perpetuate the illusion of unalienable, or natural rights. No matter what instrument of force you use to define your imaginary rights, they will not ever exist in the real world. You could amend the constitution till hell freezes over, you could get Obama to re-write the scriptures and you could publish the Magna Carta 2.0 but rights would still be abstractions. Always and forever they exist only in the heads of the faithful who can't grasp the humor in their parody of all the other religions with their confounding belief that an abstraction is a real thing.
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