Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. — Oregon will go to court to try to keep federal agents from taking legal action against doctors who help terminally ill patients die under the state’s unique assisted-suicide law, Oregon’s attorney general said Tuesday.
But Gov. John Kitzhaber predicted that few physicians, if any, would be willing to risk prosecution after U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft gave federal drug agents the go-ahead to take action against doctors who help terminally ill patients die.
"If I was practicing medicine today, I would be very concerned about the implications of being exposed to criminal prosecution" for prescribing life-ending drugs to the terminally ill, Kitzhaber said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Kitzhaber, a Democrat, blasted Ashcroft’s decision to move against Oregon’s assisted-suicide law when the country is preoccupied with a terrorism scare.
"Given everything that the country is going through right now, with the country trying to respond to anthrax, why John Ashcroft picked this moment to inject this divisive issue into the public debate is just beyond me," the governor said.
The state will file motions in U.S. District Court in Portland on Wednesday seeking to head off Ashcroft’s order, said Kevin Neely, spokesman for the Oregon Attorney General’s Office.
Ashcroft’s decision, outlined in a letter to Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson, would allow the revocation of drug licenses of doctors who participate in an assisted suicide using a federally controlled substance.
The Oregon Medical Association criticized Ashcroft’s move.
At least 70 terminally ill people have ended their lives under a doctor’s care since Oregon’s assisted-suicide law went into effect in 1997.
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