Appeals court backs Oregon suicide law

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court ordered the Bush administration not to meddle with a state’s assisted suicide law, ruling Wednesday that doctors in Oregon may prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients.

Ruling on the nation’s only law that allows doctors to assist in hastening the death of a patient, the court said U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot sanction or hold Oregon doctors criminally liable for prescribing overdoses, as the state’s voter-approved Death With Dignity Act allows.

“The attorney general’s unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide and far exceeds the scope of his authority under federal law,” wrote Judge Richard Tallman in the 2-1 opinion by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case is a classic states’ rights battle. Oregon has defended its assisted suicide law against attacks from the Justice Department, which concluded that suicide is not a “legitimate medical purpose.”

Oregon maintained it had the power to declare for itself what types of medical procedures are allowed.

In dissent, Judge J. Clifford Wallace said the courts should give “substantial deference” to the attorney general’s findings in the absence of a clear congressional policy.

The latest legal wrangling stems from April 2002, when a federal judge in Portland, Ore., blocked the Justice Department from threatening to punish doctors, for example by stripping them of their federal licenses to dispense medication.

Oregon voters first approved the act in 1994 and overwhelmingly affirmed it again three years later when it was returned to the ballot following a failed legal challenge that stalled its implementation.

The law allows terminally ill patients with less than six months to live to request a lethal dose of drugs after two doctors confirm the diagnosis and determine the patient to be mentally competent to make the request.

Since 1998, at least 171 people have used the law to end their lives, according to state records. Most of them suffered from cancer.

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