DEATH AND DIGNITY

Upholding a law allowing terminally ill patients to seek assistance in
committing suicide was the right move for the Supreme Court to make. The
U.S. Supreme Court did justice to states' rights Monday by upholding an
Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.

The 6-3 ruling affirmed key points that many already have come to
realize: One, that states have the right to regulate the practice of
medicine and the licensing of doctors - and two, that former Attorney
General John Ashcroft overstepped his bounds by using a political
issue to try to block a humane and safe law.

Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, known as the "Death with
Dignity Act," isn't designed to let just anyone end his or her life.

It is carefully crafted so that only terminally ill patients who have
been deemed mentally competent can obtain a prescription for a lethal
dose of federally regulated medications.

Two doctors must confirm the patient is an Oregon resident and is
likely to die of the illness within six months.

According to The New York Times, 325 people have obtained the lethal
prescriptions, of which 208 have been used through 2004 - only about
26 people per year since it became law in 1997.

Clearly, the law has not run amok and enabled just anyone to commit
suicide. The feds need not concern themselves with the private matters
of a few hundred people.

While each life is indeed valuable, it is up to the individual to
decide at what point the pain and suffering should end.

Terminal cancers, diseases and other debilitating illnesses can wreak
havoc on the body and cause unnecessary pain, burden and expense on
patients, families and friends.

And after months or even years of suffering, each patient should have
the ability to make his or her peace and decide when to die and to do
it with the dignity they deserve. No doctor is forced to assist in the
suicide.

No one is forced to end his or her life early if they do not desire;
but Oregonians - and all Americans - at least have the right to safely
stop the slow choking of a brain tumor.

When doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, they pledge to "remember that
there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth,
sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the
chemist's drug." By not allowing a person to end the sorts of pain
most could not imagine, a doctor would be causing a patient far
greater harm through a lack of compassion.

During President Clinton's term, then-Attorney General Janet Reno
refused Ashcroft's attempt as a senator to block the law, rightly
acknowledging that Congress had no right to withhold that sort of
power from the states.

And while the door is still open for Congress to amend federal drug
laws prohibiting lethal prescriptions, legislators should use that
opportunity quite simply to butt out.

Death is an emotional event no matter the circumstances. Rather than
extend a person's pain and trauma or force a turn to desperate means
to end his or her life, it is safer and more peaceful to seek a
doctor's assistance. Additionally, it allows family members to say
goodbye rather than being surprised by a corpse.

A patient has time to think it over and find a safe alternative, one
that caters to the dignity to which every individual is entitled.

No one's personal views on a private matter should impinge on the fate
of a few hundred who have opted for a dignified departure.

For the federal government to overstep and interfere in what is so
clearly a deeply personal matter - both for the individual and his or
her family - would do more harm than any doctor giving final aid and
relief.