Right-to-Die Law Faces Challenge

WASHINGTON — Seeking to void the nation’s only right-to-die law, outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to give federal agents the authority to punish Oregon doctors who help dying patients end their lives.

The Bush administration’s top legal officer said that federal drug laws trump the state’s traditional control over the practice of medicine. Ashcroft is appealing the rulings of two lower courts, which held that Oregon has a right to regulate its doctors.

The case is the second before the Supreme Court this year in which the administration is challenging West Coast voters on matters of individual liberty and personal privacy.

The court on Nov. 29 will hear the case of Ashcroft vs. Raich, in which the Justice Department is seeking legal authority to raid the residences of those who use home-grown marijuana to relieve their pain. It is a challenge to California’s pioneering 1996 law that allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Two years before the California law won approval, Oregon’s voters passed the United States’ first and only right-to-die measure.

Known as the Death with Dignity Act, it allows doctors to prescribe lethal medications to terminally ill patients who wish to hasten their deaths.