Are Restrictions on Physician-Assisted Suicides Constitutional?

"While Congress grapples with the Terri Schiavo case and a national battle rages over whether laws should allow doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives, a quieter revolution is taking place. With or without such laws, many Americans are taking an active role in their own deaths, some with the help of their doctors and others through actions of their own that blur the definition of suicide," wrote John Schwartz in The New York Times, in an article that appeared on May 21, 2005, during the midst of the country's turmoil regarding Terri Schiavo's right to die.

More than half of the population (65 percent, according to a 2004 Gallup survey) believes terminally ill patients have the right to hasten their deaths with the help of their physicians. Those who oppose cite religious reasoning, claiming suicide is morally wrong, and the Bush administration has challenged Oregon's assisted-suicide law in court (Schwartz, The New York Times, 2005). Oregon is currently the only state that has made provisions that allow physicians to administer life-ending drugs at the request of competent, terminally ill patients.