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Kick Ass Kunoichi
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Well, SCOTUS has made its ruling in favor of Oregon with a 6-3 majority.
Quote:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's assisted-suicide law today, declaring that the Bush administration had exceeded its authority in trying to undo the statute by punishing doctors who help people end their lives.
In a 6-to-3 decision, which would apply to other states if their people chose to follow Oregon's lead, the court held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft went well beyond his authority and expertise when he ruled in 2001 that doctors would lose their federal prescription privileges if they prescribed lethal doses of medications for patients.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, acknowledged that the long-running battle over the Oregon law is part of a "political and moral debate." But the issue for the court, he noted, was a more technical, down-to-earth one: Did the attorney general go beyond his powers under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970?
Clearly, he did, Justice Kennedy wrote, in an opinion joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. The Controlled Substances Act "gives the attorney general limited powers, to be exercised in specific ways," the court ruled.
Those limited powers, however, do not include the ability to declare illegitimate "a medical standard for care and treatment of patients that is specifically authorized under state law."
In deferring to the will of Oregon lawmakers and voters, the high court majority said Congress had explicitly envisioned a role for the states in regulating controlled substances when it enacted the 1970 law. Nothing in the act allows the attorney general to interpret prescriptions for assisted suicide as "drug abuse," Justice Kennedy wrote.
Moreover, the majority concluded, the language of the 1970 law signals a clear unwillingness to allow medical judgments to be made by an executive official who lacks medical expertise. And the former attorney general's assertion that he was making a legal decision, not a medical one, does not hold up under scrutiny, the justices said.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a sharp dissent, asserted that the attorney general did indeed have the authority to issue his 2001 ruling, regardless of the majority's reading of events. "If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," Justice Scalia wrote. Also dissenting were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Oregon voters approved the state's Death With Dignity Act twice, and it took effect in 1997. It sets out specific, detailed procedures for patients who want to end their lives, and for doctors who want to help them. Among other requirements, a patient must have a life expectancy of less than six months and must be mentally competent. The patient must also be advised of all alternatives, like hospice care and pain management. And the doctor who prescribes the drugs may not administer them.
As of the last reporting period on the law, in 2004, 326 patients had received prescriptions for medications to end their lives, and 208 had actually used them.
Today's ruling upheld one by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had voided the former attorney general's 2001 declaration.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a supporter of his state's law, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the ruling "has stopped, for now, the administration's attempts to wrest control of decisions rightfully left to the states and individuals."
But Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justices, had an opposite reaction. "This is a disappointing decision that is likely to result in a troubling movement by states to pass their own assisted-suicide laws," he told The A.P.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/po...rtner=homepage
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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