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Tremors from last month's major medical and moral earthquake in Oregon soon will be felt across the nation. Three years ago, Oregon voters approved legalizing doctor-assisted suicide by a 51 to 49 percentage margin (CT, Jan. 9, 1995, p. 54). The Death with Dignity Act, also known as Measure 16, allows any person over age 18 who has been judged to have fewer than six months to live the right to obtain a prescribed lethal dose of medication.

Since then it has been an uphill battle for assisted suicide opponents. Relying on a legal injunction to halt implementation of the ruling, a coalition of the Oregon Catholic Conference, Oregon Right to Life, Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, and more than 30 other organizations formed to repeal Measure 16.

This year, the Oregon legislature returned the issue to voters as Measure 51, which would have repealed the earlier law. In a special election on November 4, voters once again determined their state should be the first to legalize doctor-assisted suicide. By a spread of 20 percentage points, Oregon has opened the door to a major shift in health-care ethics.

"Frankly, we're scared," says David Stevens, executive director of the 10,000-member Christian Medical and Dental Society based in Bristol, Tennessee. "We're scared that a shroud of secrecy will cloak this practice so that it will be impossible to expose abuses or reverse course."

LAW IN EFFECT: Only hours before the voters went to the polls, the three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court took steps to lift the injunction that had been blocking the law for nearly three years. Typically, the original judge who issues an injunction lifts the decision, a process that takes weeks to complete.

On election day, Oregon's deputy attorney general declared the law "is now operational."

"A majority of Oregon voters deluded themselves into believing that physician-assisted suicide is about 'personal autonomy' and 'choice,' " says Carrie Gordon, bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs. "They have unleashed a force in this nation too powerful to control. In this age of skyrocketing health-care costs and desperate cost-containing attempts, an early death may become a reasonable substitute for treatment and care."

"It will make a difference in my ministry," says hospital chaplain Carl Blanchard, an evangelical Baptist in Portland. "Even though I want to be there for everybody, when assisted suicide is being considered, I may have to stand on conscientious objection."

CATHOLIC BASHING: Although much of the campaign debate related to an individual's "right to choose," repeal opponents sounded a strong note of antireligious rhetoric by pounding away at the involvement of conservative leaders and organizations. Trish Conrad, spokesperson for Yes on 51, called it "blatant bigotry" to single out the Catholic church.

"[They] tried to divide us, brother against sister, child against parent, younger against elder, one faith community against another," says Bishop Kenneth Steiner, administrator of the Catholic archdiocese of Portland. "If they did it with any other minority, they wouldn't get away with it." Still, the accusation of the church being "a political machine, driven by dogma" had an effect.

NATIONAL TURNING POINT? Based on lessons learned from the failure to defeat the Death With Dignity Act in 1994, assisted-suicide opponents attempted to stay away from moral issues and focused on medical facts this time. Doctors spoke from the pulpits instead of priests.

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December 8 1997, Vol. 41, No. 14