Stemming the tide: assisted suicide and the constitution.

Oregon became the first state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide. Passage of Proposition 16 was a milestone in the campaign to make assisted suicide a legal option. The culmination of years of effort, the Oregon vote followed on the heels of failed referenda in California and Washington, and other unsuccessful attempts to enact state laws guaranteeing the right to suicide assistance. Indeed, in 1993, four states passed laws strengthening or clarifying their ban against assisted suicide. 1 No doubt, Proposition 16 is likely to renew the effort to legalize assisted suicide at the state level. The battle over assisted suicide is also unfolding in the courts. Litigation challenging Proposition 16 on the grounds that it violates the equal protection clause is ongoing in Oregon. 2 More significantly, three cases, two in federal courts and one in Michigan state court, have been brought to establish assisted suicide as a constitutionally protected right. These three cases have yielded important rulings that foreshadow the ultimate resolution of this issue by the United States Supreme Court. The federal lawsuit challenging Washington State's law barring assisted suicide as unconstitutional, Compassion in Dying v. State of Wash-ington, resulted first in a much-publicized district court ruling striking down the law. 3 On March 9, 1995, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned that decision, holding that a right to assisted suicide is not protected by the United States Constitution. 4 In a similar lawsuit challenging New York's laws prohibiting assisted suicide, Quill v. Koppell, the district court upheld the statutes, dismissing the lawsuit after a preliminary hearing. 5 The Michigan Supreme Court decision was a consolidated ruling on four cases. Three cases, each identified as People v. Kevorkian, arose from charges brought against Jack Kevorkian for his role in the deaths of five patients. The fourth case, Hobbins v. Attorney General, was a civil suit brought by a terminally ill patient, one of her friends, and seven health care professionals who sought to strike down Michigan's statute barring assisted suicide as uncon-stitutional. On December 13, 1994, the Michigan court issued a consolidated ruling in the four cases, upholding the statute's constitutionality. 6 In Kevorkian, the court also found that the absence of a specific statute prohibiting assisted suicide at the time one of the cases arose does not preclude the common law charge of murder for suicide assistance where death is …