c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When Oregon became the first state to legalize doctor-assisted suicide in 1997, backers hoped _ and opponents feared _ that others would follow.

None did. Oregon remains the only state where a doctor can legally prescribe a drug dose aimed at hastening a patient’s death.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week, in favor of Oregon and against the Bush administration, could change that _ as much by its symbolism as its substance.

“It lifts the cloud of uncertainty,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, who helped draft the Oregon law and is president of Compassion & Choices, an advocacy group.

“There has been this wait-and-see attitude, a reluctance even on the part of our supporters to push legislation,” said George Eighmey, executive director of the group’s Oregon branch. “People said they wanted a definitive statement from the Supreme Court.”

Definitive or not, supporters of the law won a victory last week. Though the high court’s 6-3 ruling did not address the right to end one’s life, it did end speculation that the Justice Department could punish doctors for prescribing in accordance with Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act.

And it left intact the Oregon model for other states to follow.

Eighmey predicted several states, including California and Vermont, would seriously consider doing so this year.

“The main push is in California,” he said. The political stakes there are huge, because the state is home to one in nine Americans.

A bill modeled on Oregon’s law cleared two committees in the California Assembly last year but never came to a floor vote. A modified version is being pushed on the Senate side this year, said Donne Brownsey, Compassion & Choice’s lobbyist in California.

Backers hope several changes will reassure opponents and undecided legislators. For example, the bill would require a mental health evaluation for any patient who seeks an assisted suicide and is not under hospice care. In Oregon, that testing is required only if either of the two authorizing doctors deems it necessary.

Brownsey said polls show most Californians support such a law. She acknowledged that the sheer size and diversity of the state and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, among other opponents, make the political battle more complicated than in Oregon.

Doctor-assisted suicide is one of the most passionately argued issues in U.S. medicine and politics. Proponents frame the issue in terms of personal choice, death with dignity and freedom from pain. Opponents say assisted suicide violates the Hippocratic injunction to “First, do no harm” and undermines the doctor-patient relationship by turning physicians from healers into accomplices of death.

A Pew Research Center poll released two weeks before the high court’s ruling found that 46 percent of U.S. respondents supported a right to assisted suicide, and 45 percent opposed it.

Even in states where public opinion supports doctor-assisted suicide, proponents face fierce institutional opposition from groups such as the Catholic Church, the American Medical Association and the Bush administration.

“Something that intentionally causes death _ how can that be a valid medical practice?” said Dr. Charles Bentz, an Portland, Ore., internist and the president of Physicians for Compassionate Care, which opposes assisted suicide.

Bentz said the practice of assisted suicide “erodes the trust of patients in their doctor.” He finds it disturbing that only 5 percent of patients who die by assisted suicide in Oregon have undergone a psychiatric evaluation. He guesses that “over half” would benefit from a mental health test.

In all, 18 states have seen ballot measures proposed or bills introduced on assisted suicide. Most of those bills went nowhere.

Hawaii came closest to adopting assisted suicide, in 2002. The House there passed a law modeled on Oregon’s. The Senate initially passed it, 13-12, then rejected it, 14-11.

In Vermont, a bill introduced in 2003 had 40 co-sponsors by 2004. A House committee heard testimony on the bill last year but took no vote. A House committee is expected to take up an amended bill this year.

Voters in four states _ Washington (1991), California (1992), Michigan (1998) and Maine (2000) _ have rejected ballot measures that would have legalized assisted suicide. The most recent vote, Maine’s, defeated a measure by 51 percent to 49 percent.

Oregon voters narrowly approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994 and reaffirmed it in 1997 by a wider margin after legal challenges.

Under the Oregon law, doctors can prescribe a lethal drug dose to a terminally ill patient of sound mind who requests it both in writing and aloud, and meets other requirements. During the law’s first seven years, 208 Oregonians died that way.

MO/RB END COLBURN

(Don Colburn is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore.)