Status of Physician-Assisted Suicide

by Carrie Gordon Earll

The Courts: No Constitutional Right to Assisted Suicide

“Our Constitution isn’t a suicide pact. It wasn’t written to protect doctors who play executioner.” Attorney James Bopp, Jr., USA Today, October 2, 1996

In the spring of 1996, two separate federal appeals court rulings launched the debate about physician-assisted suicide into judicial overdrive. On March 6, 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional Washington state's law banning physician-assisted suicide. The justices found "there is a constitutionally protected liberty interest in determining the time and manner of one's own death."¹ This ruling created a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide in the territory of Guam and the nine western states under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit: Washington state, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii and Alaska.

The court opinion relied heavily on U.S. Supreme Court rulings in previous abortion cases, including Roe v. Wade² and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.³ Just as Supreme Court justices discovered a right to abortion in Roe and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton,⁴ the federal appeals court discovered the right to physician-assisted suicide. In the days following the ruling, Justice Stephen Reinhardt, author of the opinion, said "I think this may be my best ever."⁵

This ruling was echoed on April 2, 1996, when another federal appeals court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, struck down New York state's law banning physician-assisted suicide.⁶ This decision affected the three northeastern states in the Second Circuit: New York, Vermont and Connecticut.

The U.S. Supreme Court entered the fray on June 26, 1997, issuing two decisions on the subject of physician-assisted suicide: Vacco v. Quill,and Washington v. Glucksberg. The high court unanimously declared there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, thereby overruling both the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals rulings, which found the Washington and New York states’ laws unconstitutional.

However, while the unanimous judgment upheld existing laws banning physician-assisted suicide, justices did not put an end to the debate. Concurring opinions by justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter encourage individual states to pass laws which allow physician-assisted suicide in some cases. These invitations ensure that the debate over physician-assisted suicide will shift to the state level, where increased attempts to legalize it through state court challenges, legislation or ballot initiatives are expected.

State Legislatures
Rejecting Physician-Assisted Suicide

While proponents of physician-assisted suicide have worked for years to lay the groundwork for public acceptance, so far their efforts to legalize the practice have netted few victories. Euthanasia is illegal throughout the United States. Physician-assisted suicide is illegal by specific law or legal precedent in most states.

Many state legislatures have tackled this issue in recent years, with more than 25 rejecting bills to legalize physician-assisted suicide and nearly a dozen states adopting new laws to ban it. No state legislature has voted to legalize this practice.

Oregon voters approved a ballot initiative to legalize physician-assisted suicide in 1994 and reaffirmed the vote in 1997, making Oregon the first government in the world make the practice legal. Five other attempts to legalize physician-assisted suicide (or euthanasia) through ballot initiative (California in 1988 and 1992, Washington State in 1991, Michigan in 1998 and Maine in 2000) all failed. Physician-assisted suicide supporters in Arizona are rumored to be considering an attempt to legalize it by ballot initiative in 2002.

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