X-Message-Number: 17867
Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 21:51:43 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: Oregon law

Oregon files lawsuit against U.S. government over assisted suicide

By BRAD CAIN
The Associated Press   11/7/01 7:21 PM

SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- The state of Oregon sued the U.S. government on
Wednesday over a federal directive that essentially blocks the
state's assisted-suicide law.

Attorney General Hardy Myers filed motions in U.S. District Court
seeking to temporarily prevent the federal government from
implementing a new order barring doctors from prescribing federally
controlled substances to hasten the deaths of terminally ill
patients.

Myers also filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft to limit the practice of medicine in Oregon by
attempting to bar physician-assisted suicides.

"Ultimately, what we're seeking to do is waylay the federal
government from illegally interfering in the practice of medicine in
Oregon," said Kevin Neely, spokesman for Attorney General Hardy
Myers, who filed the legal papers.

Ashcroft on Tuesday dealt what could be a fatal blow to the country's
only law permitting assisted suicides by serving notice on Oregon
doctors that their licenses to prescribe federally controlled drugs
will be revoked if they participate in Oregon's Death with Dignity
law.

Ashcroft's order effectively puts the state's law on hold because a
doctor would have to be willing to sacrifice his or her right to
prescribe federally controlled medicines, which doctors say are
essential for their work.

"Fundamentally, the actions of the U.S. attorney general take away
the right of the state to govern the practice of medicine," Neely
said.

George Eighmey, executive director of a group that supports assisted
suicide, said doctors have called him seeking advice about whether
they should continue filling prescriptions for the lethal
barbiturates.

He said he has recommended they stop doing that because of Ashcroft's
directive.

Eighmey also said that since Ashcroft's decision, terminally ill
patients have called him expressing desperation because they can no
longer get the barbiturates through physicians.

One patient said he might shoot himself if the Ashcroft directive was
upheld by the courts and another asked for instructions on how to
suffocate himself using a plastic bag, said Eighmey, executive
director of Compassion in Dying.

At least 70 terminally ill people have ended their lives since the
Oregon law took effect in 1997, according to the Oregon Health
Division. All have done so with a federally controlled substance such
as a barbiturate.

Under the law, doctors may provide -- but not administer -- a lethal
prescription to terminally ill adult state residents. It requires
that two doctors agree the patient has less than six months to live,
has voluntarily chosen to die and is able to make health care
decisions. 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17867