The Supreme Court, by a 6 to 3 ruling, affirmed the right of Oregonians to govern their own end-of-life choices. The Death with Dignity Act was originally passed in 1994 through the Oregon initiative process.  In November 1997, the voters of Oregon overwhelmingly voted to support the law, by a 60%-40% margin.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft initiated the lawsuit against Oregon in 2001 declaring that Oregon doctors who helped people die would be violating the federal Controlled Substances Act. Ashcroft ordered Federal Drug Enforcement Agents to prosecute physicians and pharmacists for practicing under Oregon's Death with Dignity law.  His successor Alberto Gonzales pursued the lawsuit at the Supreme Court.

A Culture of Life Is A Culture of Death, and Oregon's Death with Dignity Law is An Affirmation of Life.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in response to the Supreme Court ruling,

The president remains fully committed to building a culture of life, a culture of life that is built on valuing life at all stages.

Scalia, wrote in the dissenting opinion:

... if the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death.

This is an interesting sentiment from a man who wrote in an article for First Things, God's Justice and Ours

Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral."(emphasis his)

In the same article, Scalia affirms a belief in government as an "avenger:"

...Government...derives its moral authority from God. It is the minister of God with powers to "avenge" to "execute wrath" including even wrath by the sword (which is a reference to the death penalty).

Read how Scott McClellan and Justice Scalia's culture of life affects real people. This comes from End of Life Stories:

If I only knew... by Yomery Santana, New York, 6/27/2005:

If I only knew chemotherapy would be in vain, I would have never allowed it. If I only knew Radiation was just going to burn her, I would have prohibited. If I only knew there would be no miracle for her, I would have stopped hoping. If there have only been Assisted Suicide laws in the New York States, we would have known what to do. If I only knew my mom would endure so much pain before she parted, I would opted to move to Oregon to exercise her right to die in peace. My 39-year-old mom had terminal cancer and endured the slowest, most devastating painful dying process I have ever seen. She would ask God to take her, that's how bad it had gotten. We felt helpless and hopeless!

Choices
Dominionism is about controlling our lives.  At a Reclaiming America for Christ conference in February, 2005, the Reverend D. James Kennedy said:

...Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.

The Bush Administration's lawsuit was part of a pattern to usurp power. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority on Gonzales V. Oregon:

The authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design.

The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Ashcroft's

unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide.

The Bush administration's effort to overturn Oregon's Death with Dignity Act is part of a pattern to remove our choices - choices that extend from conception to death. Consider the massive funding of Abstinence-only sex education while withholding condoms and consequentially increasing the incidence of AIDs worldwide. Esther Kaplan in The Abstinence Gluttons calls condoms

the poor stepchild, reserved for sex workers even in countries where the HIV prevalence is so high that marriage itself is an HIV risk factor.

Dominionists seek to further limit our sexual choices by criminalizing homosexuality. On July 23, 2004, with strong backing from the Bush administration, the Marriage Protection Act was adopted in the U.S. House of Representatives 233 to 194. The bill would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed in 1996 that purports to leave the recognition of same-sex marriage entirely to each state.

A legal advocacy group for the Religious Right, The Alliance Defense Fund has been spearheading the battle to put homosexuals back in the closet. According to Americans United,  the ADF champions

a radical agenda to destroy the wall of separation between church and state. It even has close ties to the most extreme faction of the Religious Right - a movement that wants to create a harsh fundamentalist Christian theocracy in America.

For years, the ADF had been opposing "domestic partner" laws in various cities, fighting ordinances protecting gays from discrimination and even working to deny gay parents custody of their own children.

Abortion is about choice, and the U.S. Congress is chipping away at women's reproductive freedom through legislation. Advocates of a woman's right to choose don't say women have to have an abortion. They just believe women should have the choice.

The  Broadcast Indecency Act of 2004 is another effort to control our access to information through censorship. The bill calls for a tenfold increase of fines for the broadcast of indecent, profane, or obscene content over the public airwaves. Five people who sit on the Federal Communications Commission have the power to fine broadcasters up to $500,000.

But today was a good day for choice. "More and more Americans are demanding a greater say in how they live and how they die," writes Peg Sandeen, director of the Death With Dignity National Center.