SALEM – Gov. Ted Kulongoski and other backers of Oregon’s assisted suicide law cheered the Supreme Court’s upholding of the law on Tuesday as a significant victory for Oregon and for terminally ill people who want the choice to end their lives early.
Kulongoski said the one-of-a-kind assisted suicide law sets Oregon apart from the rest of the nation by showing a willingness to experiment on a major policy issue. He cited the state’s landmark law making all beaches public as an example of that.
“Oregon has always been a state with new ideas. We’ve never been afraid of them,” the governor said. “Now I think you are going to see a number of other states look at this issue.”
The Oregon attorney general’s office, which urged the high court to uphold the assisted suicide law in oral arguments last fall, said Tuesday’s ruling removes any doubts about the legality of physician aid in dying.
“For Oregon’s physicians and pharmacists, as well as patients and their families, today’s ruling confirms that Oregon’s law is valid and that they can act under it without fear of federal sanctions,” state Solicitor General Mary Williams said.
Williams was part of the state’s legal team that traveled to Washington D.C. last fall to argue for Oregon’s law. The justices, on a 6-3 vote, said Tuesday the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people trumped federal authority to regulate doctors.
It was a major victory for Barbara Coombs Lee, a Portland nurse and a lawyer who was instrumental in putting together the initiative campaign that ultimately would result in voter passage in 1993 of Measure 16, the nation’s first assisted suicide law.
“They did the right thing by every dying person who yearns for peace and comfort and dignity and choice at the end of life,” Coombs Lee said of the majority of Supreme Court justices who sided with Oregon’s law.
At the other end of the spectrum, Archbishop John Vlazny, the leader of Western Oregon’s 300,000 Roman Catholics, called the court’s ruling “truly disappointing.”
Vlazny became head of the Portland Archdiocese shortly after the church had mounted an unsuccessful campaign to persuade Oregon voters to repeal assisted suicide.
“Society’s continuing disregard for the dignity and sanctity of human life from conception until natural death does not bode well for protection of the unborn, the terminally ill, the elderly and the disabled,” he said.
Dr. Susan Tolle, director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health & Science University, has been tracking use of the assisted-suicide law. She is officially neutral on the subject, but said that Oregon’s assisted suicide law has worked smoothly and in keeping with the intent of voters.
Tolle also said Oregon’s assisted suicide debate over the years has raised awareness among health care professionals, patients and their families about the need to take better care of people at the end of their lives.
Oregon now has some of the highest rates of home hospice use and of advanced directives in which patients spell out the treatment and care they want, she said.
“The result is that people more often get the treatment they want at the end of their lives,” Tolle said.
But groups that oppose the Oregon law voiced chagrin over the Supreme Court ruling, including Portland-based Physicians for Compassionate Care.
Dr. Kenneth Stevens, a board member of the group, said doctors should be concerned about proper palliative care, which means easing pain and dealing with depression. He said many patients seeking help with suicide are depressed.
Robert Kenneth of Portland, a spokesman for a group known as Death with Dignity, said he was “very pleased and relieved” by the high court’s decision.
“I couldn’t be happier. I am a little surprised given the nature of the court. I knew we could rely on Sandra Day O’Connor to give balance to this issue. This is a remarkable ruling as she steps down and retires,” Kenneth said.