MR. ASHCROFT TARGETS OREGON

Oregonians twice have approved a controversial but sensible referendum
that, under cautious safeguards, allows terminally ill patients to request
a prescription for lethal drugs to end their lives. The law requires that
two doctors certify that individuals who seek lethal prescriptions have
less than six months to live, and are mentally competent to make such a
decision. Since the Death with Dignity law took effect in 1997, just 70
people have ended their lives with such prescriptions, though many more
have received lethal prescriptions but died without using them. Reversing
the Justice Department's prior policy of respecting Oregon's law, Attorney
General John Ashcroft this week authorized federal prosecution of doctors
who help patients find peaceable death from terminal illness.

His action to block Oregon's precedent-setting law is a gratuitous and
stunning federal intrusion into the state's decision to allow terminally
ill patients control of their demise. It also contradicts Republicans'
customary rhetorical position in favor of states' rights and restrictions
on federal interference into how people conduct their lives and personal
business.

It's not surprising on that count. Republicans traditionally proclaim gun
rights, corporate rights, and peoples' rights to use their land as they
wish regardless of environmental regulations. But when it comes to
individuals' most personal rights -- whether to give birth and how they die
- -- Republicans favor intervention on behalf of their party's right-wing agenda.

This is exactly what Mr. Ashcroft is doing in pressing for prosecution of
Oregon's doctors who help their terminally ill patients under Oregon's law.
A strict right-to-life ideologue, the attorney general affirmed during his
appointment hearings that he would defend the nation's right-to-choose, Roe
v. Wade ruling, and that he would prosecute domestic terrorists who bomb
abortion clinics and kill physicians who provide abortion services. He
apparently feels no commitment, however, to respect people who differ with
him on the sensitive right-to-die issue.

Regardless, Oregon's studies have shown that patients use the Death with
Dignity Act precisely as many people who are confronted with terminal
illness might choose to do: Rarely, with great caution, and only at the
very end of difficult illnesses.

The first study, in 1999, showed that most patients who sought lethal
prescriptions did so primarily to have some control over their final days,
and not to avoid pain or financial distress for their families. They were
typically people who had been "decisive and independent throughout their
lives" and their decisions were "consistent with a long-standing belief
about the importance of controlling the manner in which they died."

Though the law is described is an "assisted suicide" law, physicians do not
administer lethal drugs; patients themselves do. Oregon also has found that
there has been no movement to the state to take advantage of the law, and
its use has been statistically minor. It mainly has worked as mental
insurance, a potential measure of relief, for patients who face difficult
but certain death.

Oregonians, both advocates and opponents of the measure, are responding
almost uniformly in outrage at the federal intrusion into an issue they
reasonably believe has been properly settled at the state level. The
state's attorney general went to court Wednesday seeking an injunction to
block Mr. Ashcroft's prosecution of Oregon's doctors who act under the
Death with Dignity law, and an extended court battle looms. It's not too
late for Mr. Ashcroft to back off, but that's unlikely. Given the pressing
business of fighting the nation's battle against terrorism, he has veered
right, to focus on terminally ill patients' decisions in Oregon. His skewed
priorities are pretty clear.