National Right to Life Committee and Oregon RTL File Brief In Support of Ashcroft Decision on Assisted Suicide.(Oregon Right to Life)(Brief Article)

The National Right to Life Committee and Oregon Right to Life (ORTL) have filed an important 32-page "friend-of-the-court" brief in support of Attorney General John Ashcroft's November 6 decision that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) does not permit the use of federally controlled drugs to assist in suicides.

The NRLC/ORTL brief is in response to a November 20, 2001, decision by Federal District Judge Robert E. Jones to extend an initial temporary restraining order against enforcement of the Ashcroft ruling until after all the parties to the litigation are able to fully brief the judge on the issues involved.

In opposing a suit brought by the pro-euthanasia Compassion in Dying, the state of Oregon, and others, the NRLC/ORTL brief argues that the federal government's unqualified interest in the protection of human life supports Ashcroft's position. It also argues that to interpret the CSA to permit the use of federally controlled drugs to assist in the suicide of "terminally ill" persons (as Oregon state law permits) would violate the federal Constitution's equal protection provision.

The Ashcroft decision, in effect, reverses the position taken by Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno. In 1998 Reno overruled the director of Drug Enforcement Administration's 1997 finding that there is no exception to the CSA's ban on using federally controlled drugs to kill patients even if state law explicitly permits such a practice.

The controversy arose when Oregon's law legalizing physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill took effect. The Oregon law permits doctors to issue a lethal "prescription for medication" to such patients. All of the more than 70 deaths that have occurred under the Oregon law have been accomplished through the use of barbiturates, which are federally controlled drugs.

Under the Ashcroft decision, physicians who prescribe and pharmacists who dispense federally controlled drugs for assisted suicide in Oregon could lose their licenses to prescribe any federally controlled drugs.

NRLC General Counsel James Bopp, Jr., underscored the importance of Attorney General Ashcroft's ruling: "The Ashcroft decision marks the most significant anti-euthanasia event since the United States Supreme Court held that there is no federal ...