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Supreme Court to Revisit Assisted Suicide October 05, 2005 2:41 AM EDT WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will revisit the emotionally charged issue of physician-assisted suicide in a test of the federal government's power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients end their lives.
Oregon is the only state that lets dying patients obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors, although other states may pass laws of their own if the high court rules against the federal government. Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law.
The case, the first major one to come before the new chief justice, John Roberts, will be heard by justices touched personally by illness. Three justices - Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens - have had cancer, and a fourth - Stephen Breyer - has a spouse who counsels young cancer patients who are dying.
Their longtime colleague, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who once wrote about the "earnest and profound debate" over doctor-assisted suicide, died a month ago after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year.
In 1997 the court found that the terminally ill have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. O'Connor provided a key fifth vote in that decision, which left room for state-by-state experimentation.
O'Connor is retiring, and Bush on Monday named White House lawyer Harriet Miers to replace her. If Miers is confirmed before a ruling is announced, O'Connor's vote will not count. A 4-4 tie would probably require the court to schedule a new argument session.
The appeal is a turf battle of sorts, not a constitutional showdown. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a favorite among the president's base of religious conservatives, decided in 2001 to pursue doctors who help people die.
Hastening someone's death is an improper use of medication and violates federal drug laws, Ashcroft reasoned, an opposite conclusion than the one reached by Janet Reno, the Clinton administration attorney general.
Oregon filed a lawsuit to defend its law, which took effect in 1997 and has been used by 208 people.
The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can trump the state.
"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."
Under Rehnquist's leadership the court had sought to embolden states to set their own rules. Roberts, who once served as a law clerk to Rehnquist and worked as a government lawyer, may be sympathetic to Bush administration arguments that the federal government needs ultimate authority to control drugs.
In this case, that would be at odds with the concept, popular among conservatives, of limiting federal interference.
Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration's Supreme Court lawyer, told justices in a filing that 49 states, centuries of tradition, and doctors groups agree that "assisted suicide is 'fundamentally incompatible' with a physician's role as healer."
The administration lost at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which said Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide."
In Oregon, the first assisted-suicide law won narrow approval, just a 51 percent majority, in 1994. An effort to repeal it in 1997 was rejected by 60 percent of voters.
"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."
The case before the Supreme Court is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.
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Charlie I am not sure how I would vote, more then likely I would vote in favor of the States right to outlaw it or legalize it. Morally I am not for assisted suicide, but I am for states rights and the feds should stay out of this, it has no effect on other states nor the federal government.
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The Tazman aka Martin Price
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What about the patient's rights , Taz ?
Are the rights of the state more important than the rights of the individual ? Where will that turd hunt end ?
Self termination is not an option for me unless the alternative is unending life support for being in a PVS , but I would never think of telling a person rotting away in agony that they had no right to die on their own terms . If they really want to go then the means to do so painlessly should definitely be an option , otherwise they'll just do it illegally anyway . What then ? Prosecute the corpse ?
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Kevin Haendiges
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Honestly, I couldn't be on the SC, because I'd vote my conscience instead of using the Constitution as my guide. Constitutionally, there should be no reason against assisted suicide, or medical suicide. Morally, I think any kind of suicide is wrong, so I couldn't vote to advocate it.
Kevin I am all for a persons right also, if the feds allowed the states to decide, which in my opinion they should, then if a person wanted to have assisted suicide and the state they lived in didn't allow it they have the right to go to one that does.
I do not support assisted suicide, I feel it is wrong, but it is not my right to decide whether someone else can legally have this or not. I have a right to my opinion, but I do not have a right to force my opinion on some one else.
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The Tazman aka Martin Price
Proud father of a Devil Dog
defacto assisted suicide which is legal and according to the patients wishes.
Very similar. Ending life support vs. ending life. A very easy legal parallel, I would think. My hunch is that legal assisted suicide will be commonplace in all 50 states in my lifetime (Which will be as long as possible, if I have anything to do with it.)
How would you vote??
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