Editorial: A Test of Life and Death

By None, The Hartford Courant, Nov. 22, 2005

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had no chance to warm up to his new job by shagging softballs. Among the first cases on the U.S. Supreme Court docket for the session that began last month was one involving the emotional subject of physician-assisted suicide.

The justices will not have to decide directly on the ethics of the act or whether terminally ill people should have the right to end their own suffering. But the decision from the bench in the case of Gonzales vs. Oregon will reflect the Roberts court's bent regarding the important right of states to decide such matters for themselves.

At issue is the narrow question of whether former Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft had the authority to intervene in Oregon's Death With Dignity law that allows doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients who meet certain stringent criteria.

Mr. Ashcroft opposes assisted suicide on religious grounds. As a U.S. senator from Missouri, he failed in his quest to block the Oregon law or pass legislation to prohibit assisted suicide. When he became attorney general, he used his federal enforcement power to threaten Oregon physicians who participate in assisted suicide with prosecution and loss of prescription privileges.

Whatever one believes about the wisdom of assisted suicide, it is law in Oregon. Voters there approved it twice, and so far more than 200 patients have chosen to end their lives.

A federal court ruled that Mr. Ashcroft was out of line in 2001 when he ordered the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, under the authority of the federal Controlled Substances Act, to prosecute Oregon doctors who participated in suicide assistance. The case now before the high court is an appeal of that decision by the Bush administration.

In a prior ruling on the subject, the Supreme Court wisely left it to states to decide whether to adopt such a policy.

There's no reason to change that opinion.

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