Pubdate: Wed, 25 Jan 2006
Source: Pilot, The (NC)
Copyright: 2006 The Pilot LLC
Contact:  http://www.thepilot.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1701
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (Ashcroft, John)

'RIGHT TO DIE' DEBATE STAYS AT STATE LEVEL

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent right-to-die decision was narrow and 
specific rather than broad and general. But it came down on the correct side.

When the court last visited the subject in 1997, it ruled that there 
is no constitutional "right to die" at the federal level, and that 
the matter of physician-assisted suicide should be fought out in "the 
laboratory of the states."

One of those states, Oregon, had adopted the so-called Death With 
Dignity Act in 1994. It lets doctors prescribe (but not administer) 
lethal drugs when they have been asked for by patients who have been 
certified by two physicians to have less than six months to live and 
who are found to be mentally competent.

When Congress failed to override the law, then-Sen. John Ashcroft, a 
Missouri Republican, voted on the losing side. Ashcroft still felt so 
strongly about the matter that he attempted to do something about it 
through the back door when newly elected President George W. Bush 
named him attorney general in 2001. Ashcroft tried to foil the Oregon 
law and keep doctors from prescribing the lethal drugs by prosecuting 
them for violating the Controlled Substances Act.

It was these prosecutions that the court has now correctly thrown 
out, ruling in effect that the (now former) attorney general was 
wrong to use a law intended for another purpose to forward his agenda.

That one was a no-brainer. Left unaddressed, though, is the larger 
question of whether or not the legal availability of assisted suicide 
is a social good. That issue will loom even larger if, as expected, 
this ruling emboldens other states to adopt laws similar to Oregon's.

The debate involves anguishing questions with no easy answers. But we 
think the court is right to hold that the debate should continue in 
the "laboratory of the states" without being made into a federal case.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman