High Court Revisits Suicide Debate

The Supreme Court is revisiting the emotionally charged issue of physician-assisted suicide in a test of the federal government's power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients end their lives.

Oregon is the only state that lets dying patients obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors, although other states may pass laws of their own if the high court rules against the federal government. Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law.

The case, the first major one to come before the new chief justice, John Roberts, will be heard by justices touched personally by illness. Three justices — Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens — have had cancer, and a fourth — Stephen Breyer — has a spouse who counsels young cancer patients who are dying.

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen said the case offers a glimpse at whether Roberts is going to side with strong federal power, which is what the Bush Administration is pitching in this case, or states rights, which is Oregon's argument.

"This is one of the biggest cases of the term, by far. It's really going to end up being Chief Justice Roberts' first big test and it's going to be our first chance to begin to evaluate what kind of justice he is going to be," Cohen said.

In 1997 the court found that the terminally ill have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. O'Connor provided a key fifth vote in that decision, which left room for state-by-state experimentation.

CBS News KXL radio correspondent Doug Carter reports out of Portland, Ore., that state attorney general Hardy Myers said the heart of the case is "what is the relative authority of the federal government versus our states' in the regulation of the doctor-patient relationship and the practice of medicine."

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who once wrote about the "earnest and profound debate" over doctor-assisted suicide, died a month ago after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year.

The appeal is a turf battle of sorts, not a constitutional showdown. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a favorite among the president's base of religious conservatives, decided in 2001 to pursue doctors who help people die.

And since then, "there are a lot of people in a lot of other states who are waiting on this case," Cohen said. "I bet that if the High Court sides with Oregon we are quickly going to see other similar laws go on the books around the country. So the stakes really couldn't get much higher."

Hastening someone's death is an improper use of medication and violates federal drug laws, Ashcroft reasoned, an opposite conclusion than the one reached by Janet Reno, the Clinton administration attorney general.

Oregon filed a lawsuit to defend its law, which took effect in 1997 and has been used by 208 people.

Dr. Peter Rasmussen, a Salem, Ore.,-based physician who has helped more than 10 of his terminally ill patients to end their lives, told CBS News that many of his patients are interested in the state's law — in fact, and ten times the number of patients who choose to use assisted suicide inquire seriously about the option.

"A lot of the people who are facing the end of their life are concerned about ... whether they will suffer," Rasmussen said. "They are reassured and comforted by the fact that if they do get into that situation they would have that option available."

The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can trump the state.

"It could be close," said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University and former Supreme Court clerk. "It is a wrenching issue. It's one of the most difficult decisions any family needs to make. There's a lot of discomfort with having the government at any level get involved."

Under Rehnquist's leadership, the court had sought to embolden states to set their own rules. Roberts, who once served as a law clerk to Rehnquist and worked as a government lawyer, may be sympathetic to Bush administration arguments that the federal government needs ultimate authority to control drugs. In this case, that would be at odds with the concept, popular among conservatives, of limiting federal interference.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration's Supreme Court lawyer, told justices in a filing that 49 states, centuries of tradition, and doctors groups agree that "assisted suicide is 'fundamentally incompatible' with a physician's role as healer."

"There is a real human need" for control over one's life, said cancer patient Charlene Andrews of Salem, Ore. "We are terminal and we know when we have a few weeks left. We know when we're unconscious. We know when we're at the end."

Rasmussen told CBS News that the patients who want to make medical decisions for themselves should see the states' and physicians' rights as important to them, too.

"If the ruling goes against us ... it would also open the door to all sorts of meddling on the part of the administration into very personal decisions that are made everyday in all 50 states," Rasmussen said. "If the administration can, on grounds of morality, make this determination, what practice is going to be next? It would be catastrophic."

The case before the Supreme Court is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.