Oregon’s voters have repeatedly supported a law allowing patients, under well-proscribed circumstances, to request of their doctors assistance in ending their lives.
Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, the administration’s target, was approved twice by the state’s voters and took effect in November 1997. According to the state, in a brief filed last month, 171 patients have used the law to administer lethal doses of federally regulated drugs that their doctors prescribed for them.
The law contains precise procedures for informed consent, including an explanation to the patient of alternatives to suicide, like pain relief and hospice care. Two doctors must agree on the patient’s mental competence, diagnosis and prognosis; there must be a “reasonable medical judgment” that the patient will die within six months of “an incurable and irreversible disease.”
As indicated above, the Bush Administration has repeatedly attempted to quash the law. It’s current attempt, which the Supremes will review (after it was rejected by the Ninth Circuit) centers around Federal prescription laws. The assisted suicide is done by providing a lethal drug overdose. The Justice Department claims that this serves no “medical purpose,” and therefore threatens to yank the Federal prescription licenses (as it can do under the Controlled Substances Act) from any doctors who do so.
The Supremes have tended to defer to the states in this issue in the past, recognizing its sensitivity.
Although the justices have agreed to review the case, the “who gets to decide” argument on the merits may be a hard sell. The court has been notably deferential to the states, and eight years ago, in another assisted-suicide case, it appeared to invite continued state experimentation.
In that earlier case, Washington v. Glucksberg, the court rejected the argument that the Constitution itself gives terminally ill people a right to physician-assisted suicide. But at the same time, the justices were careful to make clear that they were not closing the door. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist concluded his majority opinion with these words: “Throughout the nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society.”
This is one of those horrible situations, like abortion, where, though I have doubts and concerns over the actual practice, I dislike even more the government saying that, no, we won’t allow individuals to make a decision over it. That they are trying to do so by such a weaselly indirect fashion (“We can’t attack the law, so we’ll attack the people who act underneath it”) makes me even less sympathetic to the DoJ’s case.
One has to wonder whether Chief Justice Rehnquist’s current battle with cancer may influence the deliberations on this case.
My father had a wide variety of ailments–a failing heart and diabetes to name but two, but it was kidney failure and the prospect of a life on dialysis that made him decide that death was preferable and so he went into palliative care.
We took turns spending the night in his room with him for the three weeks it took him to die. Every effort was made to make his passing as comfortable as possible, but ***Dave after three weeks on a palliative care ward, surrounded by people dying of everything from AIDS through to cancer, I can tell you that there are some physical pains that are so great that there is no painkiller on the planet that can assuage them.
I heard people make sounds from pain that would just tear your heart out. We weren’t the only family to beg that the painkillers be raised, only to be told, “I’m sorry, we can’t, it would kill him.”
My father used to joke that when his time came he hoped his doctor would be a veterinarian because we show our pets more kindness in the face of a painful terminal illness than we show human beings. I hope I never have to face a long, painful, drawn out death.
Yep…
Right there with Marn after watching my Step-father die from lymphoma.
And I also remember the hospice nurses saying the same thing. That it would be illegal to give him more morphine because at those levels it would either kill him or he would become addicted to it. The hospice nurses said that they were giving everthing that they could, but that their hands were tied.
This was what pushed me over the edge on both the issue of assisted suicide and legellization of all drugs.
Also, Hospice nurse/staff was added to the list of job’s that I would not want to do for my body wieght in gold.
Certainly circumstances described that would cause me to never tell someone that they shouldn’t be able to make that choice for themselves.