Supreme Court ruling affirms assisted suicide law

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After more than a decade of legal battles over assisted suicide, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that Oregon has the authority to regulate medical treatment of the terminally ill.

The 6-3 ruling on Jan. 17 came down to a states’ rights issue, in which conservatives normally side with the state, and liberals with the federal authority. In this case, however, the roles were reversed, and the court said the Bush administration improperly threatened to use a federal drug law against Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of medicine at the request of their dying patients.

Observers believe the ruling could have a significant impact on other states, including California, where a bill is currently in the legislature. At least five other states have proposed, or are considering, some form of an assisted suicide law. The Vermont legislature also has a measure pending.

The Oregon law was passed by initiative in 1994 and affirmed by an even larger majority of voters in 1997, within weeks of another Supreme Court ruling in a Washington state case that also backed states as the final authority for regulating medical practice.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Oregon was among the longtime opponents who harshly criticized the ruling.

“The failure of our governmental structures to prevent doctors from violating medicine's historic ethical prohibition, ‘Do no harm,’ is a tragic error of immense proportion and significance,” Archbishop John Vlazny, head of the Archdiocese of Portland, said in a prepared statement.

Dissenting were Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who claimed that federal officials do have the power to regulate prescription drugs. In his 25-page dissent, Scalia wrote,

“If the term ‘legitimate medical purpose’ has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death,” Scalia wrote in his 25-page dissent. The head of the Christian Medical & Dental Association, Dr. David Stevens, released a statement saying that doctors now have “a license to kill.”

EP News
Published by Keener Communications Group, February 2006

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