Supreme Court upholds assisted-suicide rights

WASHINGTON — Advocates reacted with disappointment and triumph to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that continues the ethical debate on assisted suicide but keeps intact Oregon’s law permitting the procedure. In a 6–3 decision announced Jan. 17, the nation’s highest court sided with the state and against the authority of the U.S. attorney general to prevent doctors from prescribing life-ending drugs for terminally ill patients.

The attorney general “is not authorized to make a rule declaring illegitimate a medical standard for care and treatment of patients that is specifically authorized under state law,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for the majority in the case. The high court upheld a lower court ruling that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft could not hold Oregon physicians criminally liable for prescribing drugs under the state’s Death With Dignity Act. Ashcroft, citing the Controlled Substances Act, had issued a ruling that using controlled substances for assisted suicide was not a legitimate medical practice.