Terminally ill people do not have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, Orthodox Jewish groups have argued in briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Rabbinical Council of America and Agudath Israel of America last week filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the justices to support laws banning physician-assisted suicide.
Earlier this year, federal appeals courts in New York and Washington struck down laws prohibiting doctors in the two states from prescribing life-ending drugs for terminally ill but mentally competent people who want to die.
The court is scheduled to hear the states’ appeals early next year and will issue a ruling by July.
The issue has generated considerable debate among Jewish doctors and medical ethicists.
The Orthodox community, for its part, has come out strongly against assisted- suicide, arguing that Jewish law prohibits a doctor from hastening a patient’s death.
“This is an issue of critical constitutional and moral significance which Jewish tradition clearly speaks to,” said Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs, which filed a joint brief with the Rabbinical Council.
“We believe that the recognition of a constitutional right to die for the terminally ill is a clear statement against the recognition and sanctity of human life.”
In a separate brief, Agudath Israel of America said: “We respectfully urge the court to reverse these rulings and clarify the limits of constitutional moral revolution.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for the Clinton administration also filed a friend-of-the- court brief urging the Supreme Court to reinstate the New York and Washington laws banning assisted-suicide.
“A state may conclude that it has an overriding interest in maintaining a prohibition against all assisted suicides,” wrote Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger.
The high court first acknowledged a constitutional right to die in 1990 when it ruled that terminally ill people had a right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment.
But in the administration’s brief, Dellinger said, “There is an important and common-sense distinction between withdrawing artificial supports so that a disease will progress to its inevitable end, and providing chemicals to be used to kill someone.”
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