-Caveat Lector-
> The controversy over the Oregon law has undoubtedly struck a chord
> with many millions of working people who are increasingly alienated
> from an impersonal and callous profit-centered medical system.
>From www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
US attorney general supports fundamentalists on physician-assisted
suicide
By Fred Mazelis
26 November 2001
Back to screen version| Send this link by email | Email the author
US Attorney General John Ashcroft�s attempt to kill the Oregon law
that allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients
has ignited a storm of opposition and is being challenged in court.
Oregon�s Death With Dignity Act, allowing doctors to give lethal
doses of barbiturates to individuals who are terminally ill, became
law in 1997, after voters had approved it twice by sizable margins.
To prevent any possible abuse of the law, two doctors must certify
that the patient has less than six months to live and is mentally
competent, and patients must take the prescribed drug themselves,
orally and after a waiting period.
The law has not led to a large number of such suicides. Only about 70
people have taken their own lives in this fashion, about 20 a year.
But a wider number of people have been affected. Many of the dying
have explained that the knowledge that they had the alternative of
ending their pain has been of great assistance.
As a spokeswoman for the Compassion in Dying Federation, a statewide
advocacy group, explained, �Very few people use medication to hasten
their death, yet thousands obtain comfort knowing the choice is
theirs if they experience intolerable suffering.�
Over the past few years hospice care has increased, Oregon having
double the national average of such care. Many terminally ill
patients have been able to spend their final weeks of life at home
with their friends and families.
On November 6, Ashcroft, the religious fundamentalist and former
senator from Missouri, issued a directive ordering the Drug
Enforcement Administration to remove the licenses of those doctors
who prescribe lethal doses of federally regulated drugs. While not
openly challenging the constitutionality of the Oregon law, Ashcroft
is seeking to use the federal Controlled Substances Act to make it a
dead letter.
The attorney general is acting in line with the wishes of the anti-
abortion fanatics and fundamentalist elements who wield enormous
influence within the Republican Party and the Bush administration.
These advocates of an American-style theocracy believe that the
agonizing pain suffered by many cancer patients and others is part of
�God�s will.� Their �pro-life� dogma is used to justify anguish for
those nearing the end of life. They show no such concern, of course,
for the lives of thousands of prisoners now awaiting capital
punishment in the US, or the innocent victims of Washington�s bombing
campaign in Afghanistan.
Some commentators have pointed out the brazen hypocrisy of the Bush
administration in relation to its oft-repeated mantra of �states�
rights.� As shown most vividly in the theft of the 2000 election, the
same political forces that insist federal authorities have no legal
basis for making the states enforce anti-discrimination laws show no
hesitation in overruling state legislatures or judiciaries when it
comes to upholding right-wing nostrums or the privileges of the
wealthy.
Ashcroft�s attack on the privacy and democratic rights of the sick
and elderly is very much in line with the police-state moves he has
taken in recent weeks. The attorney general has authorized the secret
detention of over 1,000 people, compiled a list of more than 5,000
foreign nationals legally living in the US who are to be interrogated
by the FBI, and issued warnings of new terrorist threats based on
vague evidence that has never been made public.
Oregon state authorities successfully appealed for a stay of
Ashcroft�s order. On November 20, Judge Robert E. Jones of the
Federal District Court in Portland extended for at least four months
the restraining order he had issued a week earlier, while
preparations are made for the trial of a suit against the attorney
general brought by the state and four terminal patients. The suit
argues that the Justice Department has overstepped its authority in
an area that falls under the control of the states. Meanwhile, the
Oregon law will remain in effect. The case may eventually find its
way to the US Supreme Court.
Harvard professor of medicine Jerome Groopman, a frequent writer on
the social questions raised by developments in medicine, observed
that the states� rights argument �skirts the more fundamental issue.�
In a recent newspaper column, he wrote: �Helping nature take its
course is not criminal, and it should be outside governmental
regulation. Decisions about when and how to die are best left to
patients, families and health professionals, not legislators and
litigators.�
Groopman and others have pointed out that Ashcroft�s attack goes far
beyond its immediate impact in Oregon. Twenty-two states, while not
yet legalizing physician-assisted suicide, have passed laws
encouraging aggressive treatment of intractable pain. According to
Groopman, Ashcroft�s claim that federal authorities could easily make
the �important medical, ethical and legal distinctions between
intentionally causing a patient�s death and providing sufficient
dosages of pain medication necessary to eliminate or alleviate pain,�
showed a basic lack of medical knowledge. The doses of painkillers
that are needed to alleviate pain, including narcotics like morphine,
at the same time inevitably reduce breathing and lower blood
pressure, and hasten death.
Thus, the attack on the one law that explicitly authorizes physician-
assisted suicide could very easily become an attack on the undeclared
but nevertheless increasing use of painkillers as a means of
facilitating a relatively peaceful death for many people all over the
US. Such use of painkillers is widespread in hospice care, for
instance, although only in Oregon does it take the form of the
explicit option of suicide.
The controversy over the Oregon law has undoubtedly struck a chord
with many millions of working people who are increasingly alienated
from an impersonal and callous profit-centered medical system.
The question of assisted suicide is not a simple one, as demonstrated
by the Nazis� use of euthanasia. Nor did the sensational treatment of
the issue by Dr. Jack Kevorkian in recent years do anything to
promote a rational and humane approach to the question.
Nevertheless, it is clear that socialists must, in principle, defend
the right of terminally ill people, under professional care, to end
their own lives. The fundamentalists are correct in one respect�the
question of assisted suicide does have something in common with that
of abortion rights. At stake in both matters are questions of
democratic rights, basic human compassion, equality in access to
medical care, and enlightened social policy, in opposition to
religious dogma.
Copyright 1998-2001
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