Editorial: Reprieve for assisted suicide

Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

In the 1994 general election, Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act and it was passed into law by that state's Legislature.

It permits doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients who are mentally competent and who have been medically determined to have less than six months to live. Two doctors must verify these conditions before the drugs can be prescribed. After surviving federal court challenges, resistance from some state lawmakers and a ballot initiative against it, the law finally became effective in 1997.

Then-Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., tried in vain to block the law with appeals to then-Attorney General Janet Reno, federal court challenges and a bill he co-sponsored. After becoming attorney general, one of his first acts was to declare the law in violation of a federal regulation under the Controlled Substances Act, which states that all prescriptions must be issued for a "legitimate medical purpose." Ashcroft reasoned that assisted suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose.

On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was Ashcroft's reasoning that was not legitimate. Voting 6-3, the court ruled that Ashcroft took the regulation out of context and imposed federal power over a state without authorization from Congress. The court further said the Controlled Substances Act was written to control the flow of illicit drugs, not those legally prescribed by a doctor.

Dissenting were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia, who wrote the dissent, argued that Ascroft's interpretation of "legitimate medical purpose" was "clearly valid." He wrote that the word legitimate "connotes an objective standard of medicine," which, from the days of Hippocrates, has always meant "prevention, cure or alleviation of disease." Assisted suicide, he wrote, does not meet any of those definitions.

The majority opinion, however, did not dwell on semantics or the morality of Oregon's law. It confined itself to the question of whether Congress had ever given Ashcroft the authority to override Oregon's law. It hadn't.

And as far as this issue is concerned, we hope Congress continues to let states decide for themselves. Of course, states should include safeguards similar to Oregon's law, and allow lengthy debate before putting a proposed physician-assisted suicide law before voters or the Legislature.