Federal, state and local police goons, a dozen of them strong, with badges flashing and guns drawn, swooped down upon the humble home of a 91 year-old California woman in an early morning raid to to seize her sewing machine and a few plastic bags.
Her crime: sewing ordinary household plastic bags into hoods and offering them for sale on the Internet as part of a kit that can be used with helium to commit suicide. Some guy from Oregon bought one of her homemade kits and used it to asphyxiate himself.
The legalized thugs also seized the old lady’s computer and all of her correspondence with Final Exit Network, a nationwide group of 3,000 members, which offers advice and support to people seeking to end their lives.
Oregon lawmakers want to make a criminal out of anyone from anywhere who would send such a kit to Oregonians. They want people like that old lady brought from California to Oregon to face felony charges for “knowingly selling or transferring a substance or object that is capable of causing death to another person for the purpose of helping them commit suicide.”
So if I hand some fool from Oregon a plastic garbage bag, (or any number of other common household items), and tell him he can go home and kill himself with it if he likes, I’m guilty of a felony under this law, and subject to extradition to Oregon for punishment as a felon.
Elsewhere, a man was convicted of a 15 year felony violation of Minnesota's “aiding suicide” law for posing as a female nurse on the Internet and advising a depressed English man and Canadian woman how to commit suicide.
The judge ruled that such advice amounts to "lethal advocacy," which is not protected by First Amendment freedom of speech, and that a victims’ predisposition to commit suicide is not a valid defense.
So if I tell some fool to go jump off a cliff if he wants to kill himself, and he does just that, I’m guilty of a 15 year felony – aiding suicide by lethal advocacy -- in Minnesota.
If the 91 year-old lady were selling the same kit with instructions about how to use it to clean fish tanks, there would be no “crime,” even if some fool used it to commit suicide. If the man posing as a nurse advised someone how to commit suicide, and they didn’t heed the advice, or tried it and failed, there would be no “crime.”
So, by any logical analysis, these are not actual crimes; these are imaginary crimes -- “thought crimes.” The perpetrator of this kind of “crime” is guilty of no more than planting a “bad thought” into another persons mind.
It’s perfectly alright to sell a rope to someone, but if it comes with instructions on how to use it for hanging, and someone commits suicide with it, that’s a “crime.” It’s perfectly alright to sell a book revealing painless methods for committing suicide, but if someone uses an idea in it to kill himself, the author has committed a crime --"lethal advocacy."
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