When your body is not your own...

Washington state passed a bill putting into law an amendment allowing physician assisted suicide on November 4th.

I am ecstatic about this, just as I am about Michigan passing a bill allowing the use of medical marijuana.

Let me tell you why.

This country has, since the repeal of slavery and women's rights, been foundering over the rights of a citizen to have control over not just their lives, but of their bodies. A slave is owned, forced to obey commands of a master who only has his own needs at heart. A woman used to be the property of her husband, who had control over her body for his sexual and reproductive uses.

With the advent of the Roe Vs. Wade decision, women took the reins of their reproductive organs back into their own hands. She is no longer his slave.

With the right-to-die movement championed by Dr. Kevorkian, Oregon and now Washington State have made inroads into the citizen's right to end his own suffering, legally.

Marijuana is becoming more and more accepted as a viable method to decrease the suffering of individuals afflicted with chronic pain and cancer-related appetite loss. As an unadulterated natural substance, it shows less side effects than many anti-nausea medications and has less dependancy issues than the legal drugs.

The main issue with all of these changes is that Americans are finally getting the rights promised to them by the Constitution that have been hindered by the faulty morality inherent in the religious dogma of the Moral Majority.

Its about damn time.