Backers of right to die fear Trump Supreme Court nominee
PORTLAND – Supporters of a terminally ill person’s right to take his or her own life said Wednesday they are alarmed by President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and worry that Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation could mean a renewed battle over the legality of laws permitting the practice.
Gorsuch, a Denver-based judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote a 2006 book titled “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia” that included an extensive discussion of Oregon’s law, which allows doctors to prescribe lethal medication to patients to have less than six months to live and who request it.
In the book, Gorsuch refers to the practice as “essentially a right to consensual homicide.”
Oregon voters first approved a right-to-die ballot measure in 1994 and again in 1997 when the state legislature sent the matter back for a second vote.
The first-in-the-nation law survived a 2006 Supreme Court challenge on a 6-3 vote.
Four states now have similar laws and 25 more are considering them, said Peg Sandeen, executive director of the Death with Dignity National Center in Portland.
“It is concerning that someone who has taken our issue on as his personal issue is the nominee,” she said. “It raises the specter that we are going to have to reargue and redefend the Oregon Death with Dignity Act all over again.”
The 2006 ruling in favor of Oregon’s law was considered a rebuke to the George W. Bush administration and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The court said they improperly threatened to use a federal drug law against Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of medicine to dying patients who request it.
Sandeen believes that if the matter came before the high court again, Oregon would still win – but the process would be detrimental to patients and to a growing movement to pass right-to-die legislation in other states.
Advocates of aid in dying distinguish between euthanasia and aid in dying, in which the patient requests and takes the life-ending dose. Laws in states that allow aid in dying prohibit a doctor from administering the drugs themselves.
Vermont, Colorado, California and Washington also have aid in dying laws. In Montana, the state’s high court has ruled that physicians who prescribe a lethal dose of medication to a terminally ill patient can’t be criminally prosecuted, although there is no formal statute allowing the practice.
In Washington, D.C., the City Council approved an aid in dying bill in November that will take effect later this year unless Congress intervenes.
Kevin Diaz, national director of legal advocacy for the Washington, D.C.-based Compassion & Choices, said he’s concerned about “an erosion around the edges” even where aid in dying is explicitly allowed, he said.
In Vermont, for example, a district court is hearing a case brought by the Tennessee-based Christian Medical and Dental Association against the state. The plaintiffs allege the law violates their religious rights by requiring doctors to discuss all end-of-life care options with terminal patients.
“Given that there’s this concerted effort to claim this religious exemption from laws, I think that we’re going to eventually see something in front of the Supreme Court,” Diaz said. “Those issues are winding their way up, that’s for sure.”
In Oregon, the number of patients who take their own lives under the law has increased, as has the number of people who receive prescriptions.
In 2015, 218 people received prescriptions and 132 used them to end their lives. Numbers for 2016 have not yet been released.
Since 1997, a total of 1,545 people have had prescriptions written under the law and 991 patients have died from taking the medicine.
A significant uptick in deaths in 2014 and 2015 can likely be attributed to the high-profile case of Brittany Maynard, a California woman with terminal brain cancer who moved to Oregon in 2014 so she could take advantage of the law.