Oregon, U.S. officials clash over assisted suicide

WASHINGTON — Oregon and the United States squared off before the U.S. Supreme Court over physician-assisted suicide Oct. 5, with the state government arguing its legalization of the practice is covered by its right to regulate medicine and the federal government contending its control of drugs trumps such authority. Assisted suicide, which involves a physician prescribing but not administering a drug to take a person’s life, became legal in Oregon in 1997. Oregon remains the only state to legalize the act. Through 2004, Oregon had reported 208 deaths by assisted suicide.

The question the justices are considering in Gonzales v. Oregon is not whether assisted suicide is legal but whether the Department of Justice acted within its authority when it banned the use of federally controlled drugs in such lethal actions. Oregon won the initial two rounds in the case, first gaining a federal judge’s injunction blocking enforcement of a 2001 order by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft barring the use of drugs regulated by the Controlled Substances Act in doctor-assisted suicides. Last year, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2–1 to uphold the block on Ashcroft’s directive.