Ashcroft asks court to bar Oregon suicide law

By Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press

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The Bush administration's top legal officer said federal drug laws trump states' traditional control over the practice of medicine. Ashcroft is appealing the rulings of two lower courts, which held that Oregon has the right to regulate its doctors.

Oregon's law, known as the Death With Dignity Act, lets patients with less than six months to live request a lethal dose of drugs after two doctors confirm the diagnosis and determine the person is mentally competent.

Oregon voters approved the law, which has popular support but is rarely used. Since 1997, 171 people have used medication to end their lives, an average of fewer than 25 a year, the state reported. Most had cancer.

Social conservatives opposed to the law sought federal intervention. They said using medication to bring about death, rather than to save lives, violated the federal Controlled Substances Act. Doctors who prescribe drugs for such a purpose should lose their licenses to write prescriptions, they said.

In 1998, Attorney General Janet Reno and the Clinton administration rebuffed a move by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and Ashcroft — then a Republican senator from Missouri — to take action against Oregon's doctors.

But in 2001, Ashcroft became attorney general and his office said that "assisting suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose" for dispensing drugs. Based on this, Ashcroft said federal authorities would seek to revoke the licenses to prescribe drugs for any Oregon doctors who aided a suicide.

Oregon went to court to challenge Ashcroft's move. A federal judge in Portland blocked his policy from taking effect, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Ashcroft had exceeded his authority.

Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide" and is "unlawful and unenforceable," Judge Richard Tallman said in a 2-1 ruling last May.

The full 9th Circuit refused to reconsider Tallman's ruling in August, and Ashcroft's office waited until the 90-day deadline yesterday to file its petition in the Supreme Court. The court probably will decide early next year whether to review the case.

The high court has dealt with right-to-die cases before. Justices held in 1997 that while Americans have no constitutional right to assisted suicide, states may decide the issue. In 1990, the court ruled terminally ill people can refuse life-sustaining treatment.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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