ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 9, 1997 TAG: 9701100034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Supreme Court justices reacted skeptically Wednesday to intense arguments pressing them to give dying people a right to doctor-assisted suicide. Six of the nine justices voiced doubts about such a sweeping life-and-death ruling.
``Where should we draw the line?'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked as the court was urged to prevent New York and Washington state from imposing assisted-suicide bans.
As do most states, both make it a crime for doctors to give life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients who no longer want to live.
``Is this ever a proper question for courts as opposed to legislators?'' Ginsburg asked. Justice Anthony Kennedy added: ``You're asking us, in effect, to declare unconstitutional the laws of 50 states.''
The court's ruling, expected by July, will have an enormous effect on the continuing national debate. Whatever the justices rule, however, will be far from the last word.
Hundreds of demonstrators on both sides paraded in frigid weather outside the building as the justices focused on the most closely watched issue before them since 1992, when the court reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion.
Former Surgeon General Everett Koop told fellow demonstrators, ``It is a tragic commentary on our society when we talk about the right to assisted suicide and we don't have a right to health care.''
Hemlock Society members had their own sign: ``We support physician aid in dying.''
Terminal illness is an issue that touches all American families - indeed one that Chief Justice William Rehnquist confronted when his wife, Natalie, died in 1991 after a long battle with ovarian cancer.
Even if the court should rule that no such constitutional right exists, states might be free to enact measures allowing doctor-assisted suicide. Oregon already has done so, but that referendum vote is tied up in litigation.
After Wednesday's arguments, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and John Ashcroft, R-Mo., announced plans to introduce legislation to keep federal funds from being used to pay for or promote doctor-assisted suicides.
They said a law is needed because Oregon health officials intend to use federal Medicaid funds to pay for such suicides as ``comfort care.''
Representing doctors who challenged the New York law, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said the terminally ill have a right ``to decide this amount of agony is enough not to be a creature of the state but to have some voice.''
But Justice Antonin Scalia mocked Tribe. ``Is all this in the Constitution?'' he asked incredulously. ``This is lovely philosophy.''
Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter also voiced concern about interfering with states' efforts to avoid what New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco called the ``risk of abuse.''
Questions by Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer did not indicate the same level of skepticism. Justice Clarence Thomas asked no questions.
William Williams, Washington state's senior assistant attorney general, said his state's law sought to prevent people from being improperly influenced.
The state wants to maintain ``a clear line between physicians as healers and curers, and physicians as instruments of death of their patients,'' Williams said.
But Seattle lawyer Kathryn Tucker, representing doctors who successfully challenged the law, said dying patients are seeking a ``human and dignified'' death.
``This dying patient has only the choice of how to die,'' Tucker said. ``Will that death be brutal; will that death be peaceful?''
Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, the Clinton administration's top-ranking courtroom lawyer, urged the court to reinstate the two state laws.
The court first recognized a constitutional right to die in 1990 when it ruled that terminally ill people can refuse life-sustaining medical treatment.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has made himself a symbol of efforts to legalize assisted suicide by publicizing his role in the deaths of more than 40 people in Michigan, was not involved in the cases argued Wednesday and did not attend the sessions.
He previously said he had no desire to ``go down there and face nine religious kooks.''
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB