Download U.S. Court Upholds Law Allowing Assisted Suicide Justices reject

U.S. Court Upholds Law Allowing Assisted Suicide
Justices reject effort by attorney general to punish doctors
By David Stout
Herald Tribune 2005
International
WASHINGTON- The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, declaring that the Bush administration had exceeded its authority
in trying to undo the statute by punishing doctors who help people end the lives of
their patients.
1.
2. 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 John Ashcroft, who then was attorney
general, 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. The Oregon law, called the Death with Dignity Act,
was twice approved by the state’s voters. It is the only state law in the United States
allowing doctor-assisted suicide and has been used by more than 200 people since it
took effect in 1997.
3. The issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide remain highly controversial in the
United States, as they do in Europe, where practices range from the relatively
permissive approach of the Netherlands and Belgium, which allow doctors to end life
in certain limited conditions, to outright bans in Poland and Greece.
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a. What was the attorney general’s charge against the doctors?
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b. What punishment did he seek?
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4. In the U.S. ruling Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, acknowledged that the long-running battle over the Oregon law was part of a “political
and moral debate.” But the issue for the court, he said, was a more technical, downto-earth one: Did the attorney general go beyond his powers under the Controlled
Substances Act of 197O?
5. Clearly, he did, Justice Kennedy wrote, in an opinion joined by Justices John
Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Stephen Breyer. The Controlled Substances Act “gives the attorney general limited
powers, to be exercised in specific ways,” the court ruled. Those limited powers, he
said, do not include the ability to declare Illegitimate “a medical standard for care and
treatment of patients that is specifically authorized under state law”.
6. In deferring to the will of Oregon lawmakers and voters, the high court majority
said that 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,”
Kennedy wrote.
7. 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.
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2. Give three reasons why the judges ruled against the attorney general.
(para 5-7)
i._________________________________________________
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ii._________________________________________________
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8. The Death With Dignity Act 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.
9. Among other requirements, a patient must have a life expectancy of less than six
months and must be mentally competent. The patient must be advised of all
alternatives, like hospice care and pain management. And the doctor who prescribes
the drugs may not administer them.
10. 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. The
ruling on Tuesday upheld one by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit, which had voided the former attorney general’s 2001 declaration.
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3. What are 4 components of the Death with Dignity Act?
i._______________________________________________
ii._______________________________________________
iii._______________________________________________
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European Approaches
13. In Europe, approaches to the issue of assisted suicide range from outright bans
in Poland and Greece to permission for doctors to end life under limited conditions in
Belgium and the Netherlands.
14. A Dutch law that took effect in 2002 made the Netherlands the first country to
legalize such practices. But euthanasia is allowed only if the patient’s condition is
incurable and only if the patient is of sound mind, fully agrees to the procedure and
faces a level of suffering considered unbearable.
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4. What does the second section of the article deal with?
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5. How does the euthanasia law of Holland differ from that of Oregon?
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15. A committee comprising a doctor, a jurist and a medical ethicist checks that those
criteria are met.
16. Thousands of Dutch citizens have died under those conditions. But controversy
erupted again last year when a study found a score of cases in which doctors had
reported the euthanasia of babies with spina bifida — a severe but often surgically
correctable birth defect. The government is establishing a commission to regulate the
still-illegal practice of ending the lives of newborns with untreatable pain.
17. The Belgian Parliament in September 2002 passed a law stating that a doctor
would “not be committing an infraction” if a mentally competent adult suffering from
an incurable disease or affliction and under constant or unbearable physical or
psychological pain were allowed to die.
18. The Netherlands and Belgium are the only European Union countries to allow
such practices, though others are debating the matter, amid sharp opposition from
the Roman Catholic Church. Opinion polls in countries like Germany show
considerable public support.
19. In Switzerland, a legal loophole allows trained counselors, not required to be
physicians, to prepare a fatal overdose for someone who is terminally ill and has
asked repeatedly to die.
20. The National Assembly in France adopted a law in 2004 defining a right for
incurably ill patients, who are competent to make such a decision, to die by slowing
or halting medical treatment.
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6. Name 3 other countries and explain their positions on euthanasia.
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21. But last year, the trial of a French mother, Marie Humbert, on criminal charges for
helping end her son’s life before the 2004 law, stirred an impassioned debate. The
son, Vincent Humbert, had been a 19-year-old firefighter in 2000 when a car crash
left him nearly blind, mute and paralyzed from the neck down. His mother
campaigned for three years in support of Vincent’s wish to die, but was turned down
even by President Jacques Chirac. She unsuccessfully gave him an overdose of
sedatives in 2003, and a doctor later turned off a life-support system and administered a lethal dose of drugs.
22. Early this month a state prosecutor dropped the charges against the mother and
the doctor.
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7. What is the irony in the French mother’s act in 2003? (para 21)
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