COURT'S MERCY

In its latest decision on assisted suicide, the Supreme Court majority
rightly decided narrow legal issues, not moral ones

Time was, a 100th birthday party would make the newspaper. But
medicine nowadays has expanded the quantity and quality of life in so
many respects that birthday parties for tens of thousands of
centenarians happen every year in this country.

Such a golden moment in history may seem an odd time for the U.S.
Supreme Court to uphold a right-to-die law, as a 6-3 majority of the
justices did last week. Yet it was past time for the law to recognize
that medicine has given us new approaches to dying, just as it has to
living.

Illness that comes with aging can disqualify patients from activities
they have long considered essential to their quality of life. Most
make peace with infirmities rather than deny their powerful instinct
to live. Their choice doesn't invalidate the decision of others who
want a doctor to help them control the moment of their own death.

Still, in respecting their decision, the lives of others shouldn't be
subjected to greater risk. It's not hard to imagine a cost-driven
medical system abusing a loosely defined right to die in its treatment
of the disabled.

Against that backdrop, the Supreme Court was unanimous in its 1997
finding that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to
doctor-assisted suicide. It was retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
who recognized the different preferences people have for medical care
at the end of life when she wrote that conflicts over them would be
best resolved in the "laboratory" of the states.

North Carolinians have relied on the state's health care power of
attorney to let loved ones guide doctors and nurses in end-of-life
care. Fortunately, it has worked well enough that state legislation
for or against doctor-assisted suicide has yet to be necessary here.

In Oregon, though, voters in a 1994 referendum authorized doctors to
prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to dying patients. It's noteworthy
that the people of Oregon acted mercifully without clouding the
medical profession's fundamental mission to save lives.

Here's how: To receive the drugs, a patient must have two doctors who
agree on a prognosis of natural death within six months. The doctors
must certify the patient is of sound mind. Oregon also requires the
patient to decide when to take the fatal dose and to administer it to
themselves. Only about 200 patients have done so, and Oregon remains
the only state to legalize assisted suicide.

Last week's ruling means that the U.S. attorney general can't punish
doctors who abide by Oregon's carefully written law. The majority
justices found, reasonably, that Congress never intended for the law
against drug trafficking to govern how doctors use legal medicines.
That remains the prerogative of states, close to the actual practice
of medicine, where it belongs.

Two of the three dissenting justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas, recorded their tortured reasoning for public consumption. It's
disappointing that the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., didn't
explain why he was departing from his usual defense of states rights.
Even if a lopsided majority against him made it a moot point, the
public deserves better from the judicial system's top dog.