Thirty-three years ago, Oregon Gov. Tom McCall stood before a weekend Republican audience and introduced a subject no other politician in 1972 was willing to touch.

"I don't know whether you will get into the subject of death with dignity at this conference," he told the stunned audience, "but you'll need to soon because it is an unclear right that somehow must be made more visible and legally available. What I am talking about is death with dignity, in one's advanced years, as opposed to death as a vegetable."

Seven months later, McCall was diagnosed with the prostate cancer that took his life in 1983. He was not around when Oregon voters adopted physician-assisted suicide in 1994. At the time of his speech, McCall was endorsing only "living wills," which were rarely used in 1972, not assisted suicide.

But McCall was a genuinely compassionate man (I knew him well), and it's no stretch to believe he would have approved Oregon's 1994 choice. Certainly he would be appalled to find the Bush administration engaged in a four-year battle to overturn the Oregon program.

There is a difference between genuine compassion and "compassionate conservatism" and this issue brings it to the fore.

Opponents of the Oregon law immediately took it to court in 1994 and a federal judge put it on hold for three years, until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law. Attorney General John Ashcroft threw the federal government's weight against the law in 2001, but again the 9th Circuit ruled for Oregon. The case, now Gonzalez v. Oregon (reflecting the new attorney general), was accepted Feb. 22 for Supreme Court review.

No other state has emulated Oregon's law. Washington, after narrowly (51-49 percent) defeating assisted suicide in 1991, subsequently banned the practice. That was upheld in 1997 by the U.S. Supreme Court. That same year, Oregon voters by a wide margin re-endorsed assisted suicide.

Oregon requires two doctors to certify a terminal illness expected to bring death within six months. Only the patient himself or herself may administer the fatal drug dose. Through 2003, only 171 people chose this form of death, one in a thousand Oregon deaths.

None of those 171 people would be alive today if assisted suicide were banned, in the judgment of their physicians. Opponents of the measure are not trying to preserve life, only to prolong the agony of dying.

Like Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who keeps re-inserting a feeding tube into a comatose woman despite her husband's pleas, the Bush Justice Department is all about politics, not genuine compassion. It is a sop to the right-to-life lobby, another diversion to keep their minds off the nation's real problems.

A genuine conservative would favor individual choice, and the voters' right to determine a state's policies. Someone with genuine compassion would transfer it to the grieving family at the bedside and the intelligent and rational person making the wrenching decision to end the agony in a dignified manner.

That decision is ultimately between the dying person and his or her God, who may not be exactly the same God as the Bushes worship. A real conservative would recognize the difference, and a compassionate person would empathize with the pain of that final decision.

Instead, what has happened is a parade of posturing, as congressional conservatives attempt to legislate against the Oregon law and the Bush administration seeks ever-narrower legal interpretations to overthrow it in court. The Supreme Court, with a chief justice suffering life-threatening cancer and others well into old age, cannot help but see fading images in the mirror as they hear this case.

Tom McCall, as was so often the case, framed the issue: "Does man get into the area of playing God when he contemplates death with dignity?" He answered, "Or is he already playing God by administering wonder medicines that have helped double life expectancy in the past 100 years?"

Americans have the "right" to shoot themselves, to drive their car into a railroad abutment, to inhale lethal gas or swallow a bottle of prescription drugs. Every day in this nation, someone does one of the above. A life is ended, by conscious choice. We grieve.

Others consciously elect to end their lives in dignity, working with a licensed physician and pharmacist to end theagonizing pain and spare their loved ones the agony of deciding when to pull the plug or feeding tube. They, too, are God's people and they deserve our compassion and grieving.

Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com