Supreme Court Hears Arguments About Assisted Suicide in Oregon

The Supreme Court has kicked off its new term with an intensely scrutinized debate over Oregon’s law that allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who request it. Voters in Oregon have endorsed the law twice, but the Bush administration’s aggressive stance on preserving life at any cost has aggressively challenged the state law, the only one of its kind in the nation. The Death With Dignity law won narrow approval in Oregon in 1994, just a 51% majority. But an effort to repeal it in 1997 was rejected by 60%of voters. According to the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Oregon and the Netherlands are the only places in the world that have laws specifically permitting assisted suicide. Over 200 people have taken advantage of the law in Oregon since it took effect.

Newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts began the proceedings by delivering an intense barrage of questions to Oregon Senior Assistant Attorney General Robert Atkinson. As the hearings progressed, demonstrators marched outside the courthouse carrying signs saying "My Life, My Death, My Decision." The appeal being debated is considered to be more of a turf battle than a debate over the Constitution, since the court’s decision will dictate whether the federal government or the state government has the final say. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft decided in 2001 to actively pursue doctors who help people die, because his conservative viewpoint was that hastening someone’s death is an improper use of medication. Ashcroft believed that doing so is a violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act, and therefore the federal government should dictate whether or not the practice is legal. Oregon quickly filed a lawsuit to defend its law, which took effect in 1997.

Oregon Solicitor General Mary Williams said that because Ashcroft’s directive infringes on the rights of states to regulate medical practices, it would turn the Controlled Substances Act into a "controlled medical practices act," and thereby make the U.S. Attorney General "a one-person national medical board." Solicitor General Paul Clement told the court that "the most natural reading" of federal drug laws give the U.S. attorney general the authority to declare it illegal to use drugs to terminate life. But retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor immediately challenged Clement with a logical question about whether federal drug laws would also keep doctors from participating in the execution of murderers on death row. Although O’Connor could provide the deciding vote in Oregon’s favor, she will probably retire from the court before a final decision is reached in the case, leaving the tie-breaking decision up to the new justice who will replace her. In 1997 O’Connor cast the deciding vote in favor of states making individual determinations of whether or not terminally ill patients have the constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide.

The case is being deliberated by justices whose lives have been personally touched by serious illnesses. O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and John Paul Stevens have all been treated for cancer, and Justice Stephen Breyer’s wife counsels young terminally ill cancer patients. The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died last month after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year, once wrote about the "earnest and profound debate" over doctor-assisted suicide. Legal analysts, state legislators, and physicians across the country are anxiously awaiting the high court’s decision.

"It could be close," said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University and former Supreme Court clerk. "It is a wrenching issue. It's one of the most difficult decisions any family needs to make. There's a lot of discomfort with having the government at any level get involved." But perhaps the most anxious group awaiting a decision consists of people battling terminal illnesses. "There is a real human need for control over one's life," said cancer patient Charlene Andrews of Salem, Ore. "We are terminal and we know when we have a few weeks left. We know when we're unconscious. We know when we're at the end." In the face of such sadness and bitter courageousness, why does the federal government see a need to intervene and prolong the suffering?