Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court said that it will hear the Bush administration's case against Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, which allows doctors to prescribe but not to administer lethal doses of drugs - the patient must take the dose him or herself. Also last week, a Florida state circuit court ruled that the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo - who has been comatose for 15 years, and the subject of a legal battle for seven of those - could be removed in accordance with her husband's wishes, and against those of her parents. In this installment of "By the Numbers," the Daily looks at the legal history of physician-assisted suicide.
- 1 Number of states with a law allowing doctor-assisted suicide (Oregon)
- 1997 Year in which the law was enacted
- 2 Times the law has been upheld by a federal appeals court
- 2 Times Oregon voters have upheld the law
- 1998 Year in which Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, decided that Oregon's law allowing physician-assisted suicide could stand
- 2001 Year in which George Bush's former attorney general, John Ashcroft, challenged Reno's decision on the grounds that doctors who abet patients' suicides by prescribing lethal drugs to them are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act
- 2006 Year in which the Supreme Court's ruling on the matter is expected
- 6 or less Months away from death a person must be (in addition to having a chronic disease and being of sound mind) in order to meet the law's conditions for doctor-assisted suicide
- 2Physicians that must confirm that these conditions are met
- 171 People who have committed assisted suicide under Oregon's law
- 68 Average age of those people
- 1990 Year in which Terri Schiavo went into a coma
- 2 Times since then that Schiavo's feeding tube was court-ordered to be taken out
- 2 Times those court orders were overturned
- 107,000 Signatures on a petition delivered to the US Capitol by the pro-life Center for Reclaiming America in support of keeping Schiavo alive
The statistics cited above come from the Denver Post, the Houston Chronicle, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and ABC News.
