Partisans press case on assisted suicide
Many activist groups and other followers gathered at the Supreme Court Wednesay to either support or protest Oregon's law that permits physicians to help patients commit suicide.By MATTHEW DALY
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 -- Gayle Hafner, a member of the group "Not Dead Yet," came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to express her feelings about the Oregon law permitting physician-assisted suicide.
Jane Glazer, rear, speaks to an unidentified fellow demonstrator supporting physician assisted suicide in front of the Supreme Court Wednesday in Washington. The Supreme Court revisited the emotionally charged issue of physician-assisted suicide in a test of the federal government's power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients and ending their lives. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)Hafner, a disability rights lawyer from Towson, Md., said failure to ban the practice could justify killing anyone who is not able-bodied or suffers from a disability.
"They are treating (patients) as a commodity," she said.
Demonstrators representing both sides were out in force as the Supreme Court considered the law, which the Bush administration opposes.
"My Life, My Death, My Choice," read a sign supporting the law, which allows doctors to issue lethal overdoses to help terminally ill patients end their lives.
"Oregon law protects doctors, not patients," said a sign carried by an opponent of the law.
James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for the National Right to Life Committee, also opposes the law.
"We think the critical point is this is not medical treatment," Bopp said at a news conference after the hourlong arguments before the court. "It's cheaper to kill, more expensive to treat" terminally ill patients, he said.
Oregon is the only state that lets dying patients obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors, although other states may pass such laws if the Supreme Court rules against the federal government.
Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law, saying it violates the federal Controlled Substances Act. The Justice Department said in 2001 that doctors could be punished for prescribing lethal overdoses, arguing that physician-assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose."
Lynn Brallier of Columbia, Md., said the administration was trying to take away an important right from patients near death.
"He's for this miserable death rather than the choice to go a little gently, a little earlier," Brallier said of President Bush. Brallier called Bush's position ironic, since he has sent thousands of U.S. troops to face possible death in Iraq and Afghanistan, and failed, in her view, to intervene quickly enough during Hurricane Katrina.
The sign she carried read: "FEMA let them suffer and die. Gonzales makes them suffer while dying." Attorney General Alberto Gonzales represents the administration in its challenge of the Oregon law.
Nico van Aelstyn, a lawyer who represents Compassion & Choices, one of the advocacy groups that backs the Oregon law, said the law's supporters expect to win.
"The states have been given the authority traditionally in our federal scheme to regulate medicine and that is what they are doing," he said, adding that nothing in federal drug law gives that authority to the attorney general.
"The attorney general was not elected, he is not a doctor and he is not given anywhere in that act express authority to regulate medicine," he said.
As many as six of the nine justices appeared to support the Oregon law, van Aelstyn said.
But Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said the court appeared closely divided. The case may even end in a 4-4 tie, he said, if no decision is made before retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor steps down. In that case, the court would likely schedule new arguments next year.
Story Produced by: Lindsey N. Kirkland
