January 1998
Supreme Indecision
by Laura Hershey
The highest court's ruling against doc-aided death
Do you have a right to a doctor’s help to end your life? The U.S.
Supreme Court, in a decision last June that in no way put the anguishing
issue to rest, said no. In separate cases, plaintiffs had sued
Washington and New York states, claiming that bans on physician-assisted
suicide are unconstitutional. They argued that while it is legal to
hasten death by refusing life-support, terminally ill people who are not
on life-support but want to end their suffering are denied
administration of lethal drugs. The plaintiffs called this "unequal
treatment" because one group of people (those kept alive by such
measures as ventilators and feeding tubes) are treated differently from
another (the terminally ill who are able to live without these
measures). Federal appeals courts agreed; the Supreme Court unanimously
did not.
Unanimity is unusual for the Justice, and while all nine reached the
same conclusion, they took different roads to get there. Chief Justice
Rehnquist’s majority decision was based as much on legal tradition as on
universal principles. Invoking concepts of common law that have, for
more than 700 years, forbidden aiding death, he wrote that there’s a
"distinction between letting a patient die and making that patient die."
Plus, since terminating your own life was never before regarded as a
legal right, it could not be so now – in contrast to the withdrawal of
life-support, which is consistent with the time-honored right to refuse
medical treatment.
Justice O’Connor signed the majority opinion but also wrote her own,
leaving the door open for future consideration of the issue. She left
unanswered "whether a competent person who is experiencing great
suffering has a constitutionally cognizable interest in controlling the
circumstances of his or her imminent death," concluding only that in
these two cases the question was moot because Washington and New York
allow doctors to give high-dose pain-relieving drugs, even when death
results. O’Connor also suggested that state legislatures be permitted to
legalize and regulate the practice: "There is no reason to think the
democratic process will not strike the proper balance between the
interests of terminally ill, mentally competent individuals who would
seek to end their suffering and the state’s interest in protecting those
who might seek to end life mistakenly or under pressure." And in a
separate opinion that raised the relevance of "basic values"
transcending legal conventions, Justice Souter went further, allowing
that assisted suicide may, at some point be found to be consistent with
individual liberty.
Public opinion seems to contradict the court’s decision. A recent
poll found two third of U.S. adults favoring limited legalization of
doctor-aided suicide. Activists on al sides are gearing up for battles
that, from now on, will be waged mainly state by state. Twenty-one state
legislatures this year considered bills that clarify or regulate the
use of pain medication for patients near death – including the
administration of drugs that may hasten death. In October, the Supreme
Court refused to consider the constitutionality of Oregon’s 1994 voter
initiative that legalizes assisted suicide, removing a major obstacle to
the law’s taking effect. Oregon voters were scheduled to decide on a
repeal of the law as POZ
Search: assisted suicide, supreme court
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