Seeking compassion in dying: the Washington State law against assisted suicide.

In May of 1994, federal district Judge Barbara Rothstein ruled in Compassion in Dying v. Washington' that certain terminally-ill adults have a constitutional right to commit physician-assisted suicide. Six months later, Oregon voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative allowing certain terminally-ill adults to obtain physicians' prescriptions for lethal drugs.2 These parallel legal actions moved the Pacific Northwest to center stage in the growing national debate over physician-assisted suicide (in which doctors supply patients with drugs or other means to commit suicide), and euthanasia (in which doctors administer a life-ending medication or procedure). From a constitutional standpoint, the decision by Judge Rothstein is more significant than the Oregon initiative because her reasoning calls into question statutes against assisted suicide that are currently in effect in most American states and are part of traditional AngloAmerican law.3 Her ruling goes far beyond the Oregon initiative (now the Death With Dignity Act), which created a narrow statutory exception in the law against assisted suicide.4 It establishes a broad,