The Right to Die
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, October 5, 2005
The John Roberts Court will hear its
first high-profile arguments today, when the justices take up a case involving
doctor-assisted suicide. Oregon law allows terminally ill people to take
lethal drugs to end their lives. But the Bush administration has tried to
override this law by threatening to prosecute doctors involved in such cases.
The Supreme Court should make it clear that Oregon can allow doctor-assisted
suicide.
Oregonians voted in favor of the Death With Dignity Act in 1994, and three years
later they voted against repeal. The Oregon law allows terminally ill
people who are likely to die within six months to receive drugs to end their
lives. When John Ashcroft, a longtime opponent of assisted suicide, became
attorney general in 2001, he issued an edict that doctors who prescribe drugs
that are used to commit suicide can be prosecuted under the federal Controlled
Substances Act. The state of Oregon and a group of terminally ill patients
challenged this Ashcroft directive and won.
This case nominally involves two hot-button issues: the right of
terminally ill people to end their lives, and the allocation of power between
the federal government and states. But the Court of Appeals was right to
resolve it more simply, through a careful interpretation of the Controlled
Substances Act. Mr. Ashcroft claimed that the law gave him the power to
overrule Oregon's assisted suicide policy. But when Congress passed the
act, it clearly intended to prohibit ordinary drug abuse, not to set out a
federal policy on assisted suicide.
Opponents of assisted suicide have never been able to persuade Congress to
outlaw assisted suicide directly. In the absence of a Congressional law,
Mr. Ashcroft had no authority to interfere with the decision of Oregon's voters.
In his zeal to stop assisted suicide, Mr. Ashcroft, a self-described legal
conservative, turned his back on two principles that are sacred to legal
conservativism. First, he refused to strictly, or even accurately,
construe a Congressional statute. Instead, he inserted meaning in it that
did not belong there, giving himself power that he should not have had.
Second, he ignored conservative dogma about deference to the states, especially
on matters like regulating medical practice, a core state concern.
The impact of today's case will be felt beyond Oregon. The Bush
administration's position has discouraged other states from enacting assisted
suicide laws. But the Supreme Court should make clear that Oregon, and all
states, have the right to allow terminally ill people to end their lives with a
maximum of dignity and a minimum of pain.
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