DATE: Friday, June 27, 1997                 TAG: 9706270668

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOAN BISKUPIC, THE WASHINGTON POST 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:  106 lines

DAY OF DECISIONS HIGH COURT REDEFINES RIGHTS OF CITIZENS, STATES, THE PRESIDENT STATES MAY STEP BETWEEN DOCOTRS AND THE DYING

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Constitution does not guarantee Americans a right to commit suicide with the help of a doctor, leaving the issue to state legislatures to decide.

The court invoked moral and legal arguments in its ruling, acknowledging that the terminally ill can endure great agony, but putting more emphasis on the American tradition of condemning suicide and valuing human life.

The ruling upholds laws in New York and Washington states that make it a crime for doctors to give lethal drugs to dying patients who want to more quickly end their lives. The decision overturns a pair of lower-court decisions that had found a constitutional right to die with the aid of a doctor.

Yet while Thursday's ruling makes clear that states have a right to ban assisted-suicide, it also left them with the power to legalize the practice. Oregon already has done so, though that law is currently being challenged in court.

Ruling in the two separate cases, the justices stressed that states have an interest in protecting against potential abuses of society's most vulnerable. They also warned that assisted suicide could undermine the trust of the doctor-patient relationship by blurring the line between healing and harming.

``The state's assisted-suicide ban reflects and reinforces its policy that the lives of terminally ill, disabled, and elderly people must be no less valued than the lives of the young and healthy,'' Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote as the court took up the question of assisted suicide for the first time.

But in an important concurring opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor left open the possibility that the Supreme Court could someday find that certain individuals who are particularly suffering could have an individual right to assisted suicide.

``Every one of us at some point may be affected by our own or a family member's terminal illness,'' O'Connor wrote. ``There is no reason to think the democratic process will not strike the proper balance between the interests of terminally ill, mentally competent individuals who would seek to end their suffering and the state's interest in protecting those who might seek to end life mistakenly or under pressure.''

Thursday's rulings were arguably the most awaited in a term full of unusually emotional disputes. The subject of assisted suicide has captured the nation's attention as advancing medicine has prolonged life but not necessarily made its last days less painful. And it was personified through the exploits of retired Michigan pathologist Jack Kevorkian, who claims he has helped more than 45 people kill themselves.

Advocates on both sides of the issue predicted a path ahead laden with more controversy and debate.

``The clarity of these decisions should serve as a benchmark for other courts,'' said Mark Chopko, general counsel for United States Catholic Conference, one of the organizations that has led the fight against assisted suicide. But he added, ``the debate over the legalization of assisted suicide will continue in the political process.''

Faye Girsh, executive director of the national Hemlock Society, said the 25,000-member organization would continue its decade-old efforts to persuade state legislators to pass ``responsible, safeguarded'' legislation allowing doctors to help terminally ill patients die.

The Supreme Court first addressed the question of a right to die in 1990, when it ruled that a person has a constitionally protected right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. But that ruling involved the rather passive withdrawal of artificial life supports.

Thursday's cases posed the more-difficult dilemma of whether a physician could actually take an active role in bringing about a patient's death through lethal injection or other means.

In its decisions, the court rejected an expansion of that right, either through the Constitution's equal-protection clause or its liberty guarantee.

``(W)hen a patient refuses life-sustaining medical treatment, he dies from an underlying fatal disease or pathology,'' Rehnquist said, ``but if a patient ingests lethal (medicine) prescribed by a physician, he is killed by that medication.''

The justices also unanimously rejected the notion of a fundamental ``generalized'' right to assisted suicide. Fundamental rights, like the right to marry and have children, are those that are deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition.

To find an assisted-suicide right, Rehnquist wrote in Washington vs. Glucksberg, would mean a reversal of centuries of legal doctrine and practice, as well as the invalidation of most states' laws against it. He said the Anglo-American common law has punished or otherwise disapproved of assisting suicide for more than 700 years.

But five other justices wrote separately on whether an individual might ever have a right to assisted suicide in particular circumstances. O'Connor, who was the fifth and critical vote on Rehnquist's opinion for the court, said it was still open whether ``a mentally competent person who is experienceing great suffering has a constitutionally cognizable interest in controlling the circumstances of his or her imminent death.''

Separately, Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter said it was too early to say whether there never could be a right to assisted suicide, given a particular individual's needs and a state's interest. All the justices emphasized the need for legislatures to delve into the issue. ILLUSTRATION: In Virginia

he state enacted a law earlier this year making it a felony to

assist someone in committing suicide, or to provide the means for

them to commit suicide. Additionally, a health-care provider who

violates the law will have his or her professional license

permanently revoked. The law also allows for civil monetary

penalties to be pursued against the person assisting in the suicide. KEYWORDS: ASSISTED-SUICIDE SUPREME COURT

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