If freedom means anything at all, it is the right to primacy in regard to sexuality, reproduction, medical care and death.

Nothing spices up one's sex life like having a partner.

A free society, to be truly worthy of that name, owes healthy, competent individuals the right to end their lives on their own terms.

Much as constitutional guarantees of press freedom do little good for prospective publishers if they do not have access to paper or ink, the right to aid in dying is strikingly useless if nobody is willing to help.

Money spent on vegetative patients is money not spent on preventive care, such as flu shots and mammograms. Each night in an ICU bed for such patients is a night that another patient with a genuine prognosis for recovery is denied such high-end care. Every dollar exhausted on patients who will never wake up again is a dollar not devoted to finding a cure for cancer.

Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress.

Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.