Supreme Court, lawmakers take on assisted suicide

Most in organized medicine oppose the practice.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. March 14, 2005.

It's said that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but the public attention recently given to physician-assisted suicide has not led to a flurry of states legalizing the practice.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court recently announcing it would hear a case involving assisted suicide, lawmakers in four states introducing assisted-suicide bills and protests against the way Academy Award-winning film "Million Dollar Baby" treated the subject, assisted suicide to date is still legal in only one state: Oregon.

And that state's law is under continuous fire from those who oppose the practice.

The Supreme Court announced Feb. 22 that it would hear the U.S. Justice Dept.'s appeal of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2004 ruling involving Oregon's law. In the decision, the appellate court said then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft overstepped his authority when he proclaimed that Oregon doctors who wrote lethal prescriptions no longer could prescribe federally controlled substances.

But even if the Supreme Court reverses that decision, it will not necessarily outlaw assisted suicide.

"Some people incorrectly say that the Supreme Court is going to overturn the Oregon law," said Ken Stevens, MD, a Portland-based oncologist and vice president of the anti-assisted-suicide group Physicians for Compassionate Care. "The Oregon law would still stand, but they could not use federally controlled substances for that purpose. They would have to use something else."