Most of us entered life with help from the nimble and licensed hands of medical professionals.

Oregon voters believe that medical assistance for patients who desire suicide should be available as well, despite attempts by the federal government to outlaw the practice.

And it should be the voters' choice, not the federal government's.

The state approved the Death with Dignity Act in 1994 and affirmed it in 1997. It is a law that grants doctors the ability to prescribe lethal doses of federally regulated medication to terminally ill, yet mentally sound patients.

Oregon is the only state that has passed such a law. And for the past five years it has been put to the test by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who argued that assisted suicide is "not a legitimate medical purpose" of federally regulated drugs.

Ashcroft used the Controlled Substances Act as a defense, which states the manufacturing, possession and distribution of certain drugs are regulated by the federal government — an act used primarily to prevent drug abuse and trafficking. Some of these same regulated drugs are used for assisted suicide.

There are some things the federal government should leave state governments to decide — assisted suicide being one of them. For a moment, imagine yourself as a terminally ill patient. Ideally, it should be an individual choice. However, it would be better to have the state government, whose legislators might vote more closely to the needs of their constituents, make those decisions, rather than the federal government.

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Oregon's Death with Dignity Act with a 6-3 vote last Tuesday, its decision for doing so was based on administrative law, not moral grounds.

Which is a good thing.

Euthanasia, assisted suicide — whatever you want to call it — is right up there with other morally vexing hot topics such as abortion, capital punishment, stem-cell research and medical marijuana.

The Supreme Court is in the process of shifting dramatically from its centralized position with retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as the swing vote to a more dogmatic conservative one, with the addition of John Roberts Jr. and the likely appointment of Samuel Alito Jr. — both nominated by President George W. Bush.

Roberts made his position evident in his biggest vote as chief justice on Tuesday. He signed with the dissenting opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia that stated assisted suicide "ultimately rests, not on 'science' or 'medicine,' but on a naked value judgment."

What might seem "naked" to Justice Scalia might not be so set-in-stone for the rest of America.

Public issues, like euthanasia, are much too subjective for the federal government to decide by itself. Democracy should start on a local level. If a governing body must regulate, it's best that it be the constituency closest to home, which in this instance is our individual states.

Thankfully the court recognized that.