WASHINGTON -- The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a compromise bill by Chairman Orrin Hatch designed to thwart Oregon's unique-in-the-nation law allowing assisted suicide.
The bill, which passed 10-8 largely along party linesThursday, would clearly ban use of federally controlled drugs to assist suicides.At the same time, the bill seeks to allow doctors to prescribe huge doses of painkillers to the terminally ill without fear of being accused of assisting in suicides.
Many medical groups had opposed the original bill introduced by Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla. Opponents included the American Medical Association, the National Hospice Association and the American Society of Anesthesiologists.
But Hatch led negotiations that produced a substitute bill now endorsed by those organizations.
The compromise requires "clear and convincing" evidence to find a doctor guilty of assisted suicide (which would cost his federal license to prescribe drugs), instead of a lower "preponderance of evidence" standard.
Hatch attacked Oregon's suicide law. "By accepting assisted suicide, we are in essence telling terminally ill patients that we are unwilling to help them alleviate their suffering, that they should give up because society has given up on them."
Hatch said the proper way to help such people is to promote aggressive pain relief by protecting doctors against legal action that could arise from it.
The bill now goes to the full Senate, where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has vowed to try to talk it to death with a filibuster. Sixty votes are needed to stop a filibuster, and the bill now has 43 co-sponsors.
The House last year passed a version of the bill virtually identical to Nickles' original bill.
Of note, Oregon's other senator -- Republican Gordon Smith, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- announced this week he will support Hatch's bill even though it is unpopular in Oregon and could hurt his support there.
Smith said that as a Mormon, he opposes assisted suicide and his experiences as an LDS bishop who often served people who were dying makes him personally oppose it. Wyden said he also personally opposes it but won't let his own personal and religious beliefs stop him from defending a law passed by Oregon voters.
Hatch attacked Oregon's suicide law. "By accepting assisted-suicide, we are in essence telling terminally ill patients that we are unwilling to help them alleviate their suffering, that they should give up because society has given up on them."