Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law

With the vote count at 6-3, the Supreme Court upheld Oregon's 1997 "Death with Dignity" law. The Bush administration began the challenge in 2001, claiming that the law allowed physicians to prescribe drugs without "legitimate medical purpose". For the majority, Justice Kennedy said the "authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design." While dissenting Justice Scalia noted that "If the term `legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death."

Oregon's law requires that a person be at least 18 years old, a resident of Oregon, capable (defined as able to make and communicate health care decisions), and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months. After a specific seven steps, a physician may prescribe a lethal dose of "medication". The doctor must report the prescription and the Department of Human Services must collect and publicly distribute data in accordance with legislation passed in 1999.

Briefly, I am disappointed in the Court's ruling. While, on the whole, I am glad for this debate--it has done some real good in terms of palliative care--the idea of medicating people to death does not strike me as the most ethical of positions. My stance is pretty simple: if medications happen to cause or speed up the death process in the act of helping or improving (life-giving) a patient's ability to cope with illness or injury, then the doctor has done his job as well as he or she can. This is particularly true in relation to pain medications. On the other hand, intentionally shortening life through the use of drugs leads to the belief that, in some situations, some lives are not worth living. Allowing death and hastening death are two very distinct positions. Medications, by definition, are used to help a person, a substance used in therapy; intending to kill someone is not therapy.

It appears that, once again, the people of Oregon will be required to deal with this issue as, perhaps, it should be.