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Feds Seek to Overturn Suicide Law
Sep 23, 12:35 PM (ET)
By DAVID KRAVETS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The federal government resumed its bid to ban Oregon doctors from helping terminally ill patients commit suicide, filing papers Monday with an appeals court in an effort to strike down the only such law in the nation. Attorney General John Ashcroft is seeking to sanction and perhaps hold Oregon doctors criminally liable if they prescribe lethal doses of medication, as the voter-approved Death With Dignity Act allows. "The attorney general has permissibly concluded that suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose," Justice Department attorney Jonathan H. Levy wrote in the appeal filed at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A federal judge in Portland, Ore., had blocked the Justice Department in April from punishing Oregon doctors - such as stripping them of their ability to dispense medication if they prescribe lethal doses of medication to the terminally ill. The Oregon law, approved by voters in 1994 and 1997, allows the terminally ill to request a lethal dose of drugs if two doctors confirm they have less than six months to live and the patients are mentally competent to make the request. The patients must take the fatal dose by themselves.

posted by A Curmudgeon 5:57 AM