Court to Hear Oregon Suicide Law Case

[Muscletang]

STORY

PORTLAND, Ore. - The Bush administration is challenging Oregon's assisted suicide law, arguing that hastening someone's death is an improper use of medication and thus violates federal drug laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on Oct. 5. Supporters of the assisted suicide law say a favorable high court ruling could lead other states to follow Oregon's lead.

Oregonians approved the law in two separate votes, and many have come to see it as part of their state's identity — something that sets them apart from the rest of the nation.

Still, only a tiny portion of terminally ill Oregonians have used the law to take their lives — 208 people, representing about one in 1,000 deaths.

Take the case of Julie McMurchie's family. She and her four siblings watched as their 68-year-old mother, Peggy Sutherland, lifted a lethal dose of barbiturates to her lips.

It was difficult for them to accept that their mother was about to die, McMurchie said. But Sutherland was in a long and painful struggle with lung cancer, and her children supported her decision to end her life, McMurchie said.

"We were all hugging and kissing her and telling her it was OK to let go," McMurchie said. "Mom held up the glass of medication and said, `I don't think anyone understands how much pain I've been in.' Then she drank it herself. She was asleep in five minutes and she died within 20 minutes."

Sutherland took her own life under Oregon's Death With Dignity law, legislation that took effect in 1997 that allows terminally ill patients to obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors. No other state has such a law.

The reasons for the law's solid public support are connected with Oregon's famous independent streak, said Jim Moore, who teaches political science at Pacific University in Forest Grove.

"This is about access to assisted suicide, not necessarily being personally in favor of assisted suicide," Moore said.

George Eighmey, executive director of Compassion in Dying of Oregon, a group that advises assisted suicide patients in Oregon, said the law offers terminally ill patients a humane way to end their suffering.

"The law is working well, in the sense that the few individuals who do use it are individuals are strongly independent; well-educated, financially secure and family-oriented," Eighmey said. "These are people who wish to exit on their own terms."

Opponents include some doctors and religious organizations.

"Assisted suicide is a reversal of the proper role of a doctor as a healer, comforter and consoler to an improper role of the physician causing a patient's death," said Dr. Kenneth Stevens of Physicians for Compassionate Care, a leading opposition group.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has filed briefs in the Supreme Court case, contends that Oregon "is sending a very negative message to sick, elderly and vulnerable patients that their lives are not worth protecting and their suicides are not worth preventing," spokesman Richard Doerflinger said.

State officials say the law has worked smoothly, although one terminally ill cancer patient who tried to end his life with drugs awoke three days later, alert and talkative. The man died of natural causes about two weeks later. The state Board of Pharmacy is looking into the matter.

Dr. Peter Rasmussen, a Salem oncologist, said he has helped more than 10 of his terminally ill patients end their lives with prescriptions.

"In one case, there were members of a bikers club who came to say their goodbyes to their friend," he said. "It almost had a party atmosphere, because that's what the patient wanted."

I have mixed feelings on this subject here.

I've done research on this and have found that not all the people who die want to. Doctors will sometimes push their patients into suicide when the doctor feels it's in the best interest and not the patient.

Also family members will tell the doctors to kill the patient even when the patient doesn't want it. The family though says it's in the best interest of the patient.

The thing is I've had several family members die from cancer. I slowly watched my grandma die as the cancer shut her body down. The last days of her life were probably some of the worst.
I've also had an uncle not to long ago die very suddenly from a cancer outbreak.
My grandpa had cancer grow around his heart and very slowly squeezed almost like an orange in your hand.

I have mixed feelings here because I didn't want any of them to be in pain and I wanted their passing to be very easy. It's in our nature though that we don't want to let go and try to hang on to our loved ones as long as we possibly can.

Here's the main points that people need to consider with this.
Is the patient going to die?
Is this what the patient truely wants?
Is this what the family wants?

If this is legalized I think it should be very hard to be able to do. I think legalized suicide is something that shouldn't be thrown around lightly.

[eversio11]

I think it's a great law in theory, but you're right, there are a lot of complications with the idea that can apply.

Even if no such law exists, if I'm terminally ill, and in pain, I'll take my life despite what anyone says. And I feel that any patients that truly are ready to die, they feel the same way as me.