Legal challenges still dog Oregon Measure 16
Assisted suicide in effect . . . or is it?
Is Oregon’s Measure 16, the country’s first referendum legalizing physician-assisted suicide, now "live"? The state’s voters have endorsed it twice. The Portland Oregonian newspaper definitively stated on Nov. 27 that "there’s no question Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law remains in effect."
However, the Oregon Medical Association has advised physicians to wait until the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issues a definitive ruling on whether it intends to revoke the drug-prescribing privileges of physicians who prescribe controlled substances for the purpose of assisted suicide under Measure 16. (See story in Hospice Management Advisor, January 1998, pp. 11-12.) And Eugene, OR, District Court Judge Michael R. Hogan, whose 1995 injunction blocking Measure 16 was overturned and returned to him last October by the 9th District Court of Appeals in San Francisco, has scheduled yet another hearing on its legality for February 17. At that time he will allow Measure 16 foes one more attempt to argue that it should be declared unconstitutional.
"Now that it’s supposedly legal, there seems to be more reluctance to talk about it" on the part of assisted suicide advocates, says Ann Jackson, executive director of the Oregon Hospice Association (OHA). Hospices are concerned that DEA’s response to Measure 16 might compromise the current medical standard, endorsed by medical ethicists, of treating patients’ pain even when pain medications might incidentally shorten their lives.
The Task Force to Improve the Care of Terminally Ill Oregonians, convened in 1994 by Oregon Health Sciences University, was expected to issue its guidelines for implementing the measure in January, while a new Governor’s Task Force is also looking at implementation issues such as confidentiality, pharmacists’ practice, the DEA challenge, and what exactly, is meant by "assisting" for nurses and other professionals at the patient’s bedside, Jackson says.
Some of the state’s hospices are considering draft policies that would allow their employees to be at the scene when a patient ingests lethal medications, but not to assist in the suicide, she adds. As of press time, at least one hospice in the state had reported intent by one of its patients to obtain assisted suicide. The measure imposes a 15-day waiting period between a patient’s first request and the physician’s order for lethal medications.
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