742
Stevens, J., concurring in judgments
death is legitimate. Indeed, not only is that interest sometimes legitimate, I am also convinced that there are times when it is entitled to constitutional protection.
II
In Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of Health, 497 U. S. 261 (1990), the Court assumed that the interest in liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed the right of a terminally ill patient to direct the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. As the Court correctly observes today, that assumption "was not simply deduced from abstract concepts of personal autonomy." Ante, at 725. Instead, it was supported by the common-law tradition protecting the individual's general right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. Ibid. We have recognized, however, that this common-law right to refuse treatment is neither absolute nor always sufficiently weighty to overcome valid countervailing state interests. As Justice Brennan pointed out in his Cruzan dissent, we have upheld legislation imposing punishment on persons refusing to be vaccinated, 497 U. S., at 312, n. 12, citing Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 26-27 (1905), and as Justice Scalia pointed out in his concurrence, the State ordinarily has the right to interfere with an attempt to commit suicide by, for example, forcibly placing a bandage on a self-inflicted wound to stop the flow of blood. 497 U. S., at 298. In most cases, the individual's constitutionally protected interest in his or her own physical autonomy, including the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, will give way to the State's interest in preserving human life.
Cruzan, however, was not the normal case. Given the irreversible nature of her illness and the progressive character of her suffering,9 Nancy Cruzan's interest in refusing medical care was incidental to her more basic interest in controlling the manner and timing of her death. In finding that her
9 See 497 U. S., at 332, n. 2.
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