Assisted suicide law settlement could affect Maine law - WMTW Portland

Maine has a residency clause for medically assisted suicide, but that is coming under fire

SALEM, Ore. —

Oregon will no longer require people to be residents of the state to use its law allowing terminally ill people to receive lethal medication, after a lawsuit challenged the requirement as unconstitutional. That ruling could have ripple effects in Maine, where a similar law is on the books.

Maine lawmakers passed the so-called Death With Dignity bill in 2019 and Gov. Janet Mills signed it into law on June 12, 2019.

In a settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, on Monday, the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Medical Board agreed to stop enforcing the residency requirement and to ask the legislature to remove it from the law.

Advocates said they would use the settlement to press the eight other states, including Maine, and Washington, D.C., with medically assisted suicide laws to drop their residency requirements as well.

“This requirement was both discriminatory and profoundly unfair to dying patients at the most critical time of their life,” said Kevin Diaz, an attorney with Compassion & Choices, the national advocacy group that sued over Oregon’s requirement.

Laura Echevarria, a spokeswoman for National Right to Life, which opposes such laws, warned that without a residency requirement, Oregon risked becoming the nation’s “assisted suicide tourism capital.”

But Diaz said that was unlikely, given safeguards in the law, such as the requirement that physicians determine whether patients are mentally capable; that it is extremely difficult for terminally ill people to make extended trips to another state; and that many people want to die in the presence of loved ones near home — not across the country.

“There’s no tourism going on,” Diaz said.

Compassion & Choices sued on behalf of Dr. Nicholas Gideonse, a Portland, Oregon family practice physician and associate professor of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University. A longtime supporter of medical aid-in-dying laws, Gideonse had been unable to write terminal prescriptions for patients who live just across the Columbia River in Washington state.

“Any restriction on medical aid in dying that doesn’t serve a specific medical purpose is difficult,” Gideonse said Monday. “In no other way is my practice restricted to Oregon residents, whether that’s delivering babies in the past or other care that I provide.”

The lawsuit argued that the residency requirement violated the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause, which forbids states from discriminating against citizens from other states in favor of its own citizens.

The Oregon Health Authority and the medical board declined to comment on why they settled the case. The state attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Enacted in 1997, Oregon’s first-in-the-nation law allows terminally ill people deemed to have less than six months to live to end their lives by voluntarily taking lethal medications prescribed by a physician for that purpose.

Some 2,159 people have died after ingesting terminal drugs under the law since it took effect, according to data published last month by the Oregon Health Authority.

California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont, Washington state and Washington, D.C., have approved similar laws, all with residency requirements. Montana’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law does not prohibit medical aid in dying.

source: https://www.wmtw.com/article/assisted-suicide-law-settlement-affect-maine/39569754

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