Assisted Suicide Ruling Reviewed Panel Of 11 Judges Conducts Unusual Second Review Of Ruling In Washington State
When U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein of Seattle struck down the Washington State law prohibiting assisted suicide in May 1994, she may have gone too far, some members of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals suggested Thursday.
During arguments before an 11-judge panel, several judges asked whether Rothstein’s ruling could mean the state would lack the legal power to halt potential abuses of assisted suicides.
Rothstein, in a ruling that drew nationwide attention, said that terminally ill, mentally competent adults have the constitutional right to end their lives with the assistance of physicians.
The case was brought by Compassion in Dying, a Seattle organization that provides counseling and assistance to terminally ill people who want to hasten their deaths.
A three-judge appeals court panel overturned Rothstein’s ruling in March, but in an unusual step the court agreed to a second review by an 11-judge panel.
Compassion in Dying attorney Kathryn Tucker had a spirited exchange with U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of Fairbanks, Alaska, about the possible implications of Rothstein’s ruling.
Kleinfeld, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, asked Tucker if the decision meant it would be legal for a teenager to give a jilted and depressed friend a gun to commit suicide.
Judge Robert Beezer of Seattle also asked if Rothstein’s ruling was too broad in throwing out all of the state statute.
Tucker said, however, that Rothstein’s ruling was obviously written to apply only terminally ill, mentally competent adults.
In defending Rothstein’s ruling, Tucker said the decision would allow terminally ill people a death with the kind of dignity “that a gunshot or a plastic bag” does not afford.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt from Los Angeles, a liberal appointee of former President Jimmy Carter, suggested that if Rothstein’s ruling was too broad the appeals court could return the case to her for further consideration.
William Williams, a Washington
attorney general, criticized Rothstein’s ruling for creating a new liberty not “deeply rooted in our nation’s history.”
Rothstein ignored the state’s “right to protect life in general,” and “the right to protect the potential for abuse or undue influence,” Williams said.
But U.S. Circuit Judge David Thompson noted that “there was a time-honored opposition to abortion, yet we got Roe v. Wade,” the landmark abortion-rights case.
The abortion issue is central to this case before the appeals court panel because Rothstein drew an analogy to a woman’s right to choose an abortion in her ruling.
She wrote, “the suffering of a terminally ill person cannot be deemed any less intimate or personal, or any less deserving of protection from unwarranted governmental interference, than that of a pregnant woman.”