Newswise — The Supreme Court today upheld Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law in a vote of 6-3, saying a federal drug law does not override the state's 1997 law used in the assisted suicide cases of seriously ill people.
A Saint Louis University health care lawyer and ethicist, one of the foremost experts on pain and the law, is available to put the issue into perspective.
"The Supreme Court's opinion in Gonzales v. Oregon is a very significant opinion on several fronts," says Sandra Johnson, J.D., LL.M., a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and at the Saint Louis University Center for Health Care Ethics. "Of course, from the perspective of efforts to legalize assisted suicide, it gives that movement a significant boost."
Johnson called the decision consistent with the Court's earlier opinions in similar cases, such as Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco vs. Quill. Johnson said if the high court had decided in favor of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' stance against assisted suicide, "with the swipe of a pen, those earlier cases would have been eviscerated."
"Still, the opinion in Gonzales v. Oregon certainly leaves the door open for Congress to enact legislation prohibiting physician assisted suicide," Johnson says. "This case really had to do only with the Attorney General's authority " not the authority of Congress.
"This opinion is also significant for physicians treating patients in pain. It at least provides some basis for challenging aggressive DEA prosecutions of doctors who treat their patients in pain with medications that are controlled substances."
Johnson is the co-author of the leading textbook on health law and a member of Saint Louis University's Center for Health Studies, ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the number one health care law program in the nation.
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