Right To Die

Stepping up their campaign against euthanasia, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops have served notice that they will fight doctor-assisted suicide as intensely as they have abortion. The declaration by Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston comes a week after a major federal appeals court decision that held that a mentally competent, terminally ill adult has a constitutional right to utilize a doctor's assistance to hasten death. Supporters of assisted suicide hailed the decision by the U.S.

Laying the groundwork for a major constitutional confrontation, the state of Washington declared Monday that it will appeal a groundbreaking federal appeals court decision permitting physician-assisted suicide. Washington Atty. Gen. Christine Gregoire said she will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the emotion-laden question because it is "a watershed issue of public policy that requires the review and analysis of our nation's highest court."

Bishop Donald Ott is accustomed to leading Michigan's United Methodists, but for the last few weeks, he had a different job: foreman of the jury that acquitted Dr. Jack Kevorkian in Pontiac of illegally aiding suicides. Ott, who had written about his support of doctor-assisted suicide after losing his father to liver cancer, said he thinks the jury's March 8 decision is a sign of a "societal shift of some major proportions."

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the renegade physician seeking to legalize assisted suicide, was acquitted Friday on charges of helping two terminally ill patients kill themselves. It was the second time since 1994 that Kevorkian was found not guilty of violating Michigan's now-expired ban on assisted suicides. Kevorkian has helped 27 people to end their lives since 1990. The thin, frail-looking retired pathologist sat passively as the jury in Pontiac, Mich., read the not-guilty verdicts.

The Clinton administration urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to reject the idea that the law should allow terminally ill persons to get medical help in ending their lives. "There is no obvious stopping point," if the court upholds a constitutional right to assisted suicide, Solicitor General Walter Dellinger told the justices. Dellinger acknowledged that the cases before the court concern only persons who are dying and want to end their suffering.

The founder of Michigan's Hemlock Society chapter, a 73-year-old woman who herself is dying of cancer, has been indicted along with assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, her lawyers said. Janet Good received a letter from prosecutors telling her to report for an arraignment Tuesday, though it didn't specify the charge, her attorney said. Kevorkian was charged last week in the Aug. 30 death of Loretta Peabody of Ionia, Mich.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that in its upcoming term it will hear arguments on physician-assisted suicide. The issue has been building in this country during the last few years as authorities in Michigan have tried unsuccessfully to convict assisted-suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Meanwhile, some other countries have opened the door to letting patients determine when and how they will die.

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will decide whether Americans who are terminally ill have a right to get help from their doctors and family members to end their lives. The so-called right-to-die question, to be argued early next year, is probably the most far-reaching constitutional issue to come before the court since abortion.

The woman who putters in the garden at the blue stucco house is bony and frail, with a soft handshake and wide blue eyes. She brings to mind a character from a Tennessee Williams play--delicate, ethereal, immersed in a world of her own. Linda Schneider's mind is slipping away; a rare genetic disorder is eating at the gray matter inside her skull. Her conversation is like water rolling across a tabletop--elusive, hard to grasp.

Two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to rule on whether a terminally ill person has a right to die with a doctor's help, Justice Antonin Scalia told a college audience in the nation's capital it is "absolutely plain that there is no right to die." Although Scalia's view is neither surprising nor new, it is unusual for a justice to speak publicly about an issue that is before the court. In a recent talk to a class at Catholic University, Scalia repeated that "it is absolutely plain. . . .