High court takes up physician-assisted suicide

Some supporters of Ashcroft's position see the case as an opportunity for the high court to address the right to life. Matthew Staver, of the Florida-based group Liberty Counsel, says that by relying on federally-controlled drugs to carry out physician-assisted suicides Oregon is forcing the federal government to participate in ending a person's life.

"When a state undertakes efforts to undermine the right to life I think the federal government has the right to assert the preference for life," Mr. Staver says.

Supporters of the Oregon law say the central issue in the case is the balance of federal-state power. Federalism and states' rights is usually a priority of conservatives. The practice of medicine has traditionally been an area of state control.

But in this case the Bush administration is pushing to nationalize medical regulations at the expense of state regulations, they say.

Such intrusion into state authority should not be permitted unless Congress made clear at the time it wrote the federal drug laws that state regulations would be preempted, supporters say.

"It is painfully ironic that such a conservative administration and conservative attorney general would be using an agency rule to dramatically expand the power of the [federal government] over the states," says Eli Stutsman, a Portland appellate lawyer who represents two Oregon physicians in the case.

Mr. Stutsman says the attorney general's job under the federal Controlled Substances Act has always been to battle drug trafficking, not to rewrite the law to undermine the lawful practice of medicine under state regulations. He says Ashcroft changed the law to reflect his own personal policy preferences rather than remaining faithful to the drug laws as written by Congress.

"He is not the FDA [Food and Drug Administration], he is the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], and his law enforcement role doesn't allow him to regulate medicine," Stutsman says.

Supporters of Ashcroft's approach say such efforts are important to prevent opening a Pandora's box of end-of-life issues. "Once you open the medical industry up to saying we are going to use medical ways of making people die, there is no way to stop that," says Mailee Smith of the Chicago-based group, Americans United for Life. "What the Oregon law says to people is that their life isn't worth anything once they get past a degree of illness," she adds.

Stutsman has a different perspective.

"There is nothing more thoughtful and profound than having the conversation that the Oregon Death With Dignity Act brings up," he says. "It is not anything that is done quickly, cheaply, or without thought. It is just the opposite."

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