Assisted-suicide law wins at Supreme Court

January 17, 2006

The Bush administration has argued for years that it could block an Oregon law permitting physician-assisted suicide. Today, the Supreme Court disagreed.

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that a federal drug law does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people.

In light of the controversy, all eyes were on new Chief Justice John Roberts — who joined Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in the dissent. Fortunately, there were only three of them, for now.

The ruling was a reprimand to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who in 2001 said that doctor-assisted suicide is not a “legitimate medical purpose” and that Oregon physicians would be punished for helping people die under the law.

[Justice Anthony] Kennedy said the “authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design.”

Had Samuel Alito been on the bench, we’d still be looking at a 5-4 ruling, at least on this issue.

Roberts, Thomas, and Scalia love states rights, unless they don’t like the right the state is asserting. Just like the rest of the GOP.

I guess all hopes that Roberts won’t be too horrible are gone.

  • It is a little difficult to see, at least from a 40,000 foot policy level, how the Sup Ct can support Oregon’s assisted suicide law and say the federal drug laws provide no basis to overrule the state referendum, yet find federal drug laws do provide a basis to overrule the California state referendum on medical marijuana.

    Near as I can tell, this sets up the absurd policy situation where if I have bone cancer and am in excrutiating pain and the side effects from the most useful medication are unbearable, my doctor has no right prescribe marijuana to help me live in less pain (and hopefully live longer), but I have an absolute right to decide the pain just isn’t worth it and get my doctor to help me die.

    Culture of life, indeed.

  • “I guess all hopes that Roberts won’t be too horrible are gone.”

    I must admit, I was perhaps naively holding out that hope, and am disappointed to see him siding with Scalia and Thomas on this one.

  • “Had Samuel Alito been on the bench, we’d still be looking at a 5-4 ruling, at least on this issue.”

    Yes, that’s the first thing I looked for when I read
    the report this morning. It’s Alito-proof. It will
    stand.

  • What no one seems to want to acknowledge is that the three no-votes — Scalia, Thomas and Roberts — are all party-line, strict Roman Catholics. Scalia and Thomas are Opus Dei members and attend a small Latin Mass church north of DC. None of these is the kind of Roman Catholic that John F. Kennedy was — he flat out told the Bishops he would never govern the US according to the dictates of his church. The Roman Catholic Church has come down heavy on “death with dignity”, gay rights, abortion and, with a majority (5 assuming the addition of Alito) on the Supreme Court you can bet which way the votes will go. On other topics (drugs, priestly pedophilia, homeless, income inequality, etc.) the Roman Catholic Church couldn’t care less. This celibate institution concerns itself almost exclusively with sex.

    For the record, I was raised Roman Catholic in what was then a tiny Protestant cow town (our newly arrived priest was greeted with a burning cross on the church lawn). I spent three years in a Roman Catholic seminary (Franciscan) planning life as a priest. In college, USF (Jesuit), I reasoned myself away from supernatural belief altogether and have remained firmly with that conclusion. I don’t dislike the Roman Catholic Church, though its coverup of priestly pedophiles is abominable (my seminary was the first major scandal reported, 11 of 44 friars accused of molesting us high school boys). All of my family remain nominal Catholics, some much more devoted the Church than that.

    That said, I’m leary of having 5 Roman Catholics on the Court, four of whom seem willing do their church’s bidding.

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