| Congressional Leaders Hope to Pass Pain Relief Promotion Act
Soon Washington, DC -- A fight over assisted suicide could complicate lawmakers' plans to
wrap up the congressional session this week and head home to campaign. Assistant Senate
Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-OK) plans to insert language restricting assisted suicide
into one of the budget bills that must pass before Congress adjourns for the year.
The amendment is expected to take the form of the pro-life legislation known as the
Pain Relief Promotion Act, a pro-life bill that would prohibit the use of federally
controlled drugs from being used in assisted suicides in Oregon and to foster the
promotion of palliative care as an assisted suicide alternative. All of the several dozen
assisted suicides in Oregon have involved such federally-controlled drugs.
"We are hopeful and optimistic that it will be sent to the president's desk and
become law," said Brook Simmons, a spokesman for the pro-life Senator.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a chief defender of his state law allowing assisted suicide, is
prepared to filibuster any budget bill containing the pro-life language. He said he
doesn't care if the stall delays lawmakers' dash home to campaign for control of the
House, Senate and White House.
"I'm going to do everything I can to block it," Wyden said Monday. "I'm
going to appeal to my colleagues who may want to set aside the Oregon law that this isn't
the way to do it in the last few hours of a congressional session."
President Clinton has not yet said whether he would sign the budget measure if it
includes the Nickles bill. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by a wide
bipartisan majority.
Oregon is the only state in the nation that allows assisted suicide although a Maine
initiative could make that state the second.
The Nickles bill -- a top priority of the right-to-life movement -- would make assisted
suicides difficult if not impossible because it would bar doctors from using federally
controlled substances such as barbiturates to deliberately cause a patient's death.
All 43 people who have died under Oregon's law since it took effect in late 1997 have
used controlled substances.
Doctors who deliberately aid a patient's death would lose their license to prescribe
drugs and face a 20-year prison sentence under the bill, according to the Justice
Department.
Bill backers say the proposal makes clear that aggressive pain treatment is a
legitimate medical practice, even if such treatment increases the risk of death. The bill
would authorize $5 million in annual grants for medical schools to teach doctors better
ways to treat pain.
Nickles first introduced the bill in 1998 after Attorney General Janet Reno decided
that federal drug agents cannot move against doctors who help terminally ill patients die
under Oregon's law.
A new version of the proposal cleared the full House last year and the Senate Judiciary
Committee this year, but stalled under the Wyden filibuster threat.
Nickles hopes he has found a way to beat Wyden by placing the language in a budget bill
that must pass to keep the federal government operating, said Dr. Gregory Hamilton,
president of Physicians for Compassionate Care in Portland, Ore., who supports Nickles'
bill.
"Ron Wyden has been stifling legitimate national debate," Hamilton said.
"There's only one way to pass this bill at this time."
The bill number is H.R. 2260
From: The Pro-Life Infonet: infonet@prolifeinfo.org Congressional Leaders Hope to Pass
Pain Relief Promotion Act Soon Source: Associated Press; October 16, 2000 |
