ROLE OF ASHCROFT'S RELIGION DEBATED

Oregon And Missouri Cases Cause Some To Raise Questions.

As governor, senator and now attorney general, John Ashcroft's opposition
to assisted suicide has been a consistent theme of his public life. And he
has participated in or had a front-row seat to several of the nation's
major right-to-die cases and legislation.

Attorney General Ashcroft finds himself in that seat once more. And, again,
he's set off a debate over what role his religious convictions play in the
process.

Earlier this month, Ashcroft issued an order undercutting Oregon's
one-of-a-kind law allowing physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

Ashcroft said doctors who use federally controlled drugs to help patients
die, as permitted under the Oregon law, face suspension or revocation of
their licenses to prescribe those drugs. A federal judge has temporarily
blocked Ashcroft's order, which was hailed by many conservative and
religious groups as much-needed action to stop what they see as needless
deaths.

"It's been a quite long-standing understanding of the federal government
that legitimate medical purposes are healing and helping people, not
killing people," Ashcroft said.

Meanwhile, right-to-die groups and other critics charged that Ashcroft was
allowing his religious beliefs to supersede a law Oregon voters twice
approved. Ashcroft, the son of a Pentecostal minister, is a devout member
of the theologically conservative Assemblies of God church.

"Attorney General Ashcroft has been clear that in a variety of areas he
would move from the role of the advocate to the man who enforces the law,"
said Burke Balch, medical ethics director for the National Right to Life
Committee. "In this instance, that is what he did."

Ashcroft's adherence to this belief has been tempered, but has not changed.
After the Missouri legislature passed a right-to-die bill in May 1991,
then-Gov. Ashcroft signed it - but urged voters to make up their own minds
on the issue. The statute allowed citizens to specify in advance directives
that they would want food and water withdrawn and to designate others to
make health-care decisions for them if they become incapacitated.

And Ashcroft has made it clear that he sees a clearly defined line between
a person's right to refuse medical treatment and asking a doctor to end a life.

"Absolutely," he said during a visit to Springfield on Friday.

Supporters of assisted suicide worry, however, that Ashcroft's Oregon
decision is just the first of many - and that his decisions will be shaped
by his religious conviction, not by detailed review of the individual laws.

George Eighmey, executive director of the group Compassion in Dying, said
Ashcroft "blatantly lied" during his Senate confirmation hearings when he
said, as attorney general, he would enforce the laws irrespective of his
personal beliefs.

But Eighmey said "that is exactly what he did," in the Oregon decision and
in previous cases.

Eighmey and other critics often cite as evidence two lengthy right-to-die
court battles in Missouri, where Ashcroft served as governor from 1985 to
1993. However, his role in those cases is far from clear and is still being
debated.

It was the Missouri attorney general and state health department that took
Joe and Joyce Cruzan of Carterville all the way to the Supreme Court to
stop them from removing a feeding tube that was keeping alive their
daughter, Nancy. A 1983 car accident left the 25-year-old Jasper County
resident in a persistent vegetative condition - her body rigid, her feet
and hands constricted and bent.

The Cruzans' friend and attorney William Colby, who is working on a book
about their case, declined to be interviewed. But in e-mails to The
Associated Press, he said Ashcroft was not a public face in the fight and
he personally doesn't know whether the governor played a role in the case.

Ashcroft made just one public pronouncement after the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled 5-4 in June 1990 that the Cruzans didn't have "clear and convincing"
evidence Nancy would have wanted to end her life.

"I am grateful that the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed Missouri's
objection to the removal of life-sustaining food and water from an
individual who has made no clear expression of her wishes," Ashcroft said.

Later, the state withdrew from the case and, with new evidence, a lower
court reversed its decision. On Dec. 26, 1990, Nancy died after having the
feeding tube removed.

Five months later, on May 17, 1991, Ashcroft signed into law the
right-to-die bill, allowing people to designate others to make health-care
decisions for them if they become incapacitated. The bill was considered a
compromise measure by both sides. At the time, Ashcroft made it clear he
wasn't urging people to give others the right to make those decisions.

"They should make a decision based on their own belief," he said after
signing the bill.

However, Missouri was still pursuing the case of Christine Busalacchi, also
in a persistent vegetative condition after a 1987 car accident.

Peter Busalacchi wanted to move his daughter to Minnesota, where
right-to-die laws weren't as stringent and doctors could consider whether
to stop providing a chemical diet.

The state pressed its case until then-Missouri Attorney General William
Webster was replaced by current Attorney General Jay Nixon in 1993.
Christine died on March 7, 1993.

Later that year, Ashcroft won a Missouri Senate seat.

Peter Busalacchi said he has no doubt about who was behind efforts to
prevent him from moving his daughter.

"The governor never became visible. Everything was done by the Department
of Health," Busalacchi said. But "we knew it was Ashcroft."

Busalacchi believes Ashcroft's religious views affected the state's
decisions then - and now as he blocks Oregon's law.

"The people in the state of Oregon have voted to allow assisted suicide,"
Busalacchi said. "Who made (Ashcroft) the pope?"

Ashcroft's opposition to assisted suicide was at times clear during his
single Senate term.

He and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., advanced a bill in 1997 to prevent
federal Medicaid funding from paying for assisted suicides, out of concern
about the Oregon death-with-dignity law. President Clinton signed the measure.

"Once a culture decides that the thing to do with terminally ill patients
is to help them die quickly, they neglect and otherwise refuse to develop
the kinds of institutions which would help people who really ought to
live," Ashcroft said during the debate.

"It is wrong," he added, and "we should not foot the bill."