LAT: Oregon Law Fuels Debate on Suicide

[DeepModem Mom]

Oregon Law Fuels Debate on Suicide
It's cited by both sides as California considers allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs.

By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer


....Sacramento lawmakers are weighing a bill that would essentially copy Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, the only assisted-suicide law in the nation. The bill, which would free doctors from liability in prescribing lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill people, has cleared one Assembly committee. It faces a vote Wednesday in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Its authors expect it to pass that hurdle but anticipate a close vote on the Assembly floor in the next week. AB 654 by Democratic Assembly members Patty Berg of Eureka and Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys would, as the law does in Oregon, allow those with incurable diseases to get a lethal prescription after asking for it once in writing and twice orally, then waiting two weeks. And as in Oregon, the California legislation would require that they ingest the drugs themselves.

Californians have just begun the debate over whether government should sanction physician-assisted suicide, but Oregon has seven years of experience. In a sense, it is the nation's laboratory, so it is no surprise that Californians on both sides of the issue are looking to Oregon's example for evidence to support their cases....

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The law enjoys such widespread support in Oregon that politicians challenge it at their peril. "Opposing the law in Oregon is a political liability now," said Barbara Coombs Lee, co-executive officer of Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit group with offices in Portland and Denver that is sponsoring the California legislation.

Even the most ardent opponents acknowledge that their best chance of overturning the law comes not from Oregon citizens but from the Bush administration, which in 2001 interpreted the federal Controlled Substances Act to ban lethal barbiturate prescriptions.

Federal courts have so far ruled against the Bush administration and upheld Oregon's law. Last November, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the appeal in its next term, beginning in October....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-suicide24may24,0,4513094.story?coll=la-home-headlines