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The United States Supreme Court last month refused an appeal that had blocked implementation of Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, a decision that exhausts judicial efforts to keep the act from going into effect.
Although the court’s refusal to hear the appeal would normally lead to the challenged law’s implementation following official notification from the Supreme Court to the various lower courts through which the issue wound its way, a repeal referendum was slated for November 4.
A recent poll published in the Oregonian newspaper showed that 64 percent of voters opposed efforts to repeal the Death With Dignity Act passed in 1994. But that poll preceded the beginning of a $2 million advertising blitz by those wishing to repeal the 1994 initiative. Supporters of the 1994 initiative, who oppose the repeal effort, have raised less than $400,000. At press time the outcome of the repeal initiative was unknown.
The Death With Dignity Act allows terminally ill, mentally competent patients to seek a doctor’s aid in dying after consulting two doctors and waiting 15 days. "Terminally ill" is defined as having an illness likely to result in death within six months.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal came as no surprise to court watchers. Although it was not based on the appeal’s legal merits or lack thereof, it was in keeping with the court’s ruling in June. That ruling declared that although there is no constitutional right to doctor assistance in dying, doctor-assisted suicide is not unconstitutional and should be decided politically and through robust debate in the individual states.