Oregon assisted-suicide law upheld

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the federal government's bid to block Oregon's assisted-suicide law, ruling that physicians do not risk criminal prosecution or other punishment for prescribing life-ending drugs.

Oregon is the only state that has such a law. But other states are considering the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, and Tuesday's 6-3 ruling was seen as an encouragement of that movement.

"More and more Americans are demanding a greater say in how they live and how they die," said Peg Sandeen, executive director of the Death with Dignity National Center in Portland, Ore. She called the court's ruling "a historic milestone that will protect the people's rights as patients."

The court's majority decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy did not uphold the Oregon law so much as it repudiated the Justice Department's basis for going after physicians who prescribe life-ending drugs.

That rule, advanced in 2001 by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, authorized the prosecution of doctors under the federal Controlled Substances Act on the basis that assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" for drugs controlled under that law.

Kennedy said the federal drug law did not give the Justice Department the authority to regulate the practice of medicine.

Arguing in dissent

The decision drew a strong dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia, who was joined by the high court's newest member, Chief Justice John Roberts.

"If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," Scalia wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in a separate dissent, said the majority opinion "beats a hasty retreat" from the court's ruling last year that doctors can be prosecuted under the federal drug law for prescribing marijuana to ease chronic pain.

Since the voter-approved Oregon law took effect in November 1997, 208 terminally ill people have swallowed sufficient quantities of prescribed pills to die, according to a 2005 report by the Oregon Department of Human Services. Figures from 2005 are due in March.

The numbers have been on a gradual growth trend, with 16 the year after the law took effect, 42 in 2003 and 37 in 2004. In 2004, according to the report, 60 life-ending prescriptions were issued by 40 doctors, but one-third of them were not used.

The Clinton administration declined to step into the assisted-suicide legal debate after the 1997 Oregon vote, the second time the measure passed, the other being in 1994. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno concluded, as Kennedy noted in his opinion, that federal drug agents were not authorized by the Controlled Substances Act to "override a state's determination as to what constitutes a legitimate medical practice."

The issue in Minnesota

Minnesota law makes it a crime to aid in a suicide or suicide attempt. Assisting in a suicide is a felony, punishable by as many as 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine. Relatives of a person who commits suicide can sue anyone aiding in the suicide.

Health care providers who administer medications to relieve pain, even if the medications hasten death, are not included in the definition of assisted suicide, as long as the provider doesn't knowingly prescribe the medication to cause a death.

There appears to be little appetite for joining the Oregon bandwagon in Minnesota, and there appears to be no effort to address the issue in the upcoming legislative session.

Scalia recognized that assisted suicide for the terminally ill has popular appeal.

"The court's decision today is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business," he said. "It is easy to sympathize with that position."

Critics seized on the fact that Tuesday's ruling was not on the Oregon law itself.

"Today's Supreme Court decision is not an endorsement of assisted suicide," said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. "All it means is that under this particular statute the attorney general may not prohibit a state from permitting federally regulated drugs to be use in assisted suicide." He stressed advancements in hospice care where end-of-life pain is controlled medically.

Staff writer Mark Brunswick contributed to this report. David Whitney is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau.