Order on Bid to Halt Suicide Law Extended

A federal judge extended a court order Tuesday that blocks an attempt by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft to dismantle Oregon’s one-of-a-kind law allowing physician-assisted suicides.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jones extended his Nov. 8 temporary restraining order and gave attorneys up to five months to prepare arguments in Oregon’s case against the Justice Department.

The state has asked Jones to permanently block Ashcroft’s Nov. 6 order barring doctors from prescribing lethal doses of federally controlled drugs to terminally ill patients.

At least 70 people have used the law since it took effect, state health officials said. All have done so with a federally controlled drug.

Ashcroft’s order prompted the court challenge, with Oregon officials saying the government was trying to strip the state of its right to govern the practice of medicine.

Justice Department attorneys argued that Oregon does not have the right to be an exception to federal drug laws.

But Steve Bushong, an Oregon assistant attorney general, argued that Ashcroft’s order exceeded powers given to him by Congress.

The judge also voiced displeasure with the way Ashcroft had issued the order--he has called it an “edict”--and questioned whether the order might discourage doctors elsewhere worried about overprescribing pain medication.

Jones posed a hypothetical situation requiring a doctor to prescribe so much medicine to a patient in great pain it renders him or her unconscious, then hastens death.

Such situations are common, the judge suggested. “Doctors are then subjected to scrutiny,” Jones said.

Under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Law, doctors may provide--but not administer--a lethal prescription to terminally ill adult state residents. It requires two doctors to agree the patient has less than six months to live, has voluntarily chosen to die and is capable of making health care decisions.

The measure was approved by voters in 1994, survived legal challenges and was approved again in a 1997 referendum by a wide margin.