Ore. lawmakers again defend assisted suicide law

06:45 AM PDT on Thursday, July 21, 2005
By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- Oregon's five Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the nation's only physician-assisted suicide law -- continuing their efforts to protect the legislation.

Sen. Ron Wyden and Reps. David Wu, Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio and Darlene Hooley filed a brief with the Supreme Court opposing efforts by the Bush administration to overturn the Oregon law.

The lawmakers claim in a 27-page brief that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is improperly interfering with the state's traditional power to regulate medicine and say his actions have no basis in federal law. The arguments are similar to those the lawmakers made in a 2002 brief filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The appeals court later upheld the law, but then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appealed the ruling last November, on the day his resignation was announced. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case earlier this year. Arguments are expected in October.

Ashcroft and Gonzales argue that federal drug laws prohibit doctors from prescribing lethal doses. The Justice Department in 2001 said it would use the federal Controlled Substances Act to punish doctors who prescribe overdoses since physician-assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose."

Since the Oregon law took effect in 1997, more than 170 people have used it to end their lives. The law is meant for only extremely sick people -- those with incurable diseases who two doctors agree have six months or less to live and are of sound mind.

Wyden, who has helped defeat two congressional efforts to overturn the law, said he was not sure what effect, if any, the newest nominee to the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts, would have on the assisted-suicide law.

"I don't pre-judge nominees," he said, adding that the Senate's job was to thoroughly review Roberts' record and judicial temperament. As far as the Oregon case, Wyden said the brief would provide Roberts and the sitting justices with "some important reading" for their night tables.

The new brief "makes it clear once again that the Justice Department has no authority under the law to throw Oregon's votes into the trash can," Wyden said at a Capitol news conference.

"To some folks, states' rights only seem to exist when (they believe) the state is right," Wyden added.

A decision to overturn the Oregon law could have a "chilling effect" on pain management nationwide, Wyden and other lawmakers said, since doctors may hesitate to prescribe significant pain medication for fear that a patient may use it to commit suicide -- and put the doctor at legal risk.

"The government would be in the room every time a doctor does a significant prescription for pain," DeFazio said. "The government shouldn't be in that room -- never!"

Blumenauer said he was hopeful the Supreme Court would decide in Oregon's favor, noting that the justices declined to "dive into the cesspool that was the Terri Schiavo case," referring to recent congressional action allowing federal intervention in the case of a brain-damaged Florida woman whose family disagreed over whether to disconnect her feeding tube.

Both the high court and members of Congress should not underestimate "how profoundly people were shaken by the Schiavo case," Blumenauer said, adding that "public opinion has hardened and galvanized" against government intervention in end-of-life medical decisions.

The case is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.

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