PORTLAND, Ore. — Despite the ruling by the Justice Department in early November that seemed likely to end legal physician-assisted suicide in Oregon, the practice remains legal, for now. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the state of Oregon are locked in a court battle over whether or not the Justice Department's interpretation will be allowed to apply to Oregon.

In early November, the Justice Department announced that it would hold Oregon doctors to the same reading of the Controlled Substances Act as doctors in other states, meaning Oregon physicians would no longer be allowed to prescribe drugs to euthanize their patients.

Oregon responded by seeking a moratorium on enforcement of the Justice Department's ruling. On Nov. 20, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones extended an interim moratorium on the Justice Department's guidelines until he passes final judgment on Oregon's challenge. No decision is expected until May or June, and the case may wind up in the Supreme Court, according to those familiar with it.

Dr. Gregory Hamilton, the spokesman for Physicians for Compassionate Care, an Oregon-based group opposed to doctor assisted suicide, told the Register that he disagrees with Oregon's position, and the Court's ruling, saying that he thinks Ashcroft's guidelines are “very good.”

Said Hamilton, “Controlled substances should not be used for assisted suicide.”

Hamilton's group has filed an amicus brief in the court case in support of the federal government, and the doctor remains confident that Ashcroft and the Justice Department will prevail.

“The assisted suicide people don't have much of a case,” he said, because “no state can unilaterally exempt itself from federal law.”

Ryan Ross of the Hemlock Society, the nation's largest pro-euthanasia group, disagrees. Said Ross, “It's a fundamental liberty to be able to go to the statehouse and change the way states deal with medicine.” Ashcroft's policy, he added, “precludes state action on physician-assisted dying.”

However, the American Center for Law and Justice, a Virginia-based pro bono legal group that specializes in pro-family, pro-life and religious issues, said Ryan's arguments will not prevail. The center has also filed an amicus brief in support of Ashcroft's decision. “It seems to be a not very difficult case,” said the center's chief counsel, Jay Sekulow. Since the regulation of drugs “clearly falls within the Drug Enforcement Act,” the use of drugs in doctor-assisted suicide is a federal issue, Sekulow said, and therefore should be over-seen by the Justice Department.

Sekulow added that even under the Clinton administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration wanted to enforce the law by laying charges against Oregon doctors who participated in suicides, but “[former Attorney General] Janet Reno vetoed them.”

National Implications

Sekulow said the American Center for Law and Justice had become directly involved because “only one state has licensed the taking of life in this way,” and “we don't want to see this become a trend.”

The Hemlock Society, in contrast, is lobbying for just such a trend. “Polls consistently show that two-thirds of Americans support physician-assisted suicide,” Ross said.

Ross argued that people “in extreme pain” should be allowed to be prescribed “barbiturates” to induce death when their suffering is unbearable. But Dr. Hamilton countered that such rhetoric is a “scare tactic” that distorts the medical reality, that modern palliative care eases patients’ physical discomfort in virtually every case. Said Hamilton, “99.9% of people in Oregon die [painlessly] without assisted suicide, and the other .1% could too, if they had a better doctor.”

According the brief filed in court by Physicians for Compassionate Care, “each year national experts have reassured doctors, nurses and hospice workers that no patient needs to die in unrelieved pain. In fact, not one patient during the first three years of assisted suicide in Oregon listed actual untreatable pain as the main cause of their suicidal wishes. Instead, those individuals who were given lethal overdoses in Oregon were anxious, depressed, or had other subjective psychological and social concerns.”

At least 70 people are known to have committed suicide with doctors’ help since the law went into effect in 1998.

Ashcroft has made it clear “aggressive pain management” will be protected whatever happens with assisted suicide, Dr. Hamilton said.

Ross claimed that the only reason more states have not passed assisted suicide laws is because “the opposition is well organized and well-financed.” He cited especially the “bishops of the Catholic Church” as leaders of the opposition to the passage of such laws.

Catholic leaders in Oregon concur that the Church has strenuously opposed every initiative seeking to legalize assisted suicide. “We have opposed this since it was first introduced … and we continue to do so,” said Robert Castagna, general counsel for the Oregon Catholic Conference.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable. Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded” (No. 2277).

The Catechism also specifies that “Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator” (No. 2324).

Pope John Paul II also condemned assisted suicide in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life). “Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder,” the Holy Father stated, adding that it is a “perversion” of mercy. True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing another's pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear.”

Andrew Walther writes from Los Angeles.