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Speaker 1: Assisted suicide or aid in dying, that which is the

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Speaker 1: term used by those in favor of the practice, is

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Speaker 1: legal in six states and the District of Columbia, but

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Speaker 1: not in New York. Last week, New York's Court of Appeals,

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Speaker 1: the state's highest court, ruled it there is no constitutional

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Speaker 1: right under the New York Constitution to assisted suicide, and

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Speaker 1: the New York law prohibits it. The ruling is a

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Speaker 1: bitter disappointment to proponents of the practice and was cheered

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Speaker 1: by opponents of it, including the Catholic Church. Here to

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Speaker 1: talk with us today about the New York ruling is

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Speaker 1: David or like Or, the co director of the u

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Speaker 1: N Health the UNLV Health Law Program at the University

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Speaker 1: of Nevada, Las Vegas william S Boyd's School of Law.

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Speaker 1: David Um, this was, you know, a constitutional challenge to

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Speaker 1: a law banning, uh, banning people from getting assistance if

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Speaker 1: they want to uh put themselves to death when presumably

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Speaker 1: when they are chronically ill. What was the court's rationale here? Yes, uh,

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Speaker 1: this is an important decision and it applies to people

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Speaker 1: when they're terminally ill. That the issue was when you're

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Speaker 1: expected to live no longer than six months at that point,

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Speaker 1: do you have a right to say, as in the

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Speaker 1: six States and the District of Columbia, that you don't

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Speaker 1: want to continue living? And this court basically followed the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court about twenty years ago. This issue came up

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Speaker 1: before the U. S. Supreme Court, and the court then said, Um,

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Speaker 1: the Constitution doesn't recognize the fundamental right here. This is

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Speaker 1: something that should be left to the states to decide.

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Speaker 1: And so Oregon, Washington, California, Vermont, Colorado, and d C

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Speaker 1: have decide that it is permissible for their residents. But

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Speaker 1: right now, m following the U. S. Supreme Court in

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Speaker 1: New York and other states of cream courts is said, Um,

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Speaker 1: given the concerns about, you know, people misusing it and

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Speaker 1: slippery slopes, if we allow people to get a prescription

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Speaker 1: to take a lethal dose of drug, will that lead

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Speaker 1: to euthanasia where the physician can inject the lethal drug.

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Speaker 1: The courts have have not been willing to recognize a

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Speaker 1: constitutional right, so it doesn't say that. So what it

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Speaker 1: means is for New Yorkers to get the right the

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Speaker 1: Californians now have, they would have they would have to

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Speaker 1: go to the legislature to authorize it, David, the court

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Speaker 1: used a rational basis standard, which involves a strong presumption

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Speaker 1: that the challenge legislation is valid. Would the court have

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Speaker 1: come out the same way if it had used a

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Speaker 1: higher standard. No, Yeah, this is very important whether you

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Speaker 1: if the court doesn't see a right, it's an important

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Speaker 1: right at stake. It us what it calls rational basis review,

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Speaker 1: and all the state has to demonstrate is that it

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Speaker 1: there's an important interest. Well, it doesn't even have to

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Speaker 1: be a very major interest, but we do have one

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Speaker 1: preserving life. So there's an important interest at stake, and

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Speaker 1: as long as it rather there's a rational connection between

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Speaker 1: the statute and the interests in the state. We want

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Speaker 1: to make sure we protect life. And one way we

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Speaker 1: protect life is not letting people take a lethal dose

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Speaker 1: of drugs. Well, that is certainly a rational way. But

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Speaker 1: if you had a fundamental right at stake, then the

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Speaker 1: state has to show, well, there's you know, no less,

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Speaker 1: but the court would say less restrict of all terms?

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Speaker 1: Do we have to have a complete band If we're

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Speaker 1: worried about people ending their lives prematurely, well, what if

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Speaker 1: we limit the right to people who are terminally ill,

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Speaker 1: who are suffering with from pain. The same people who

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Speaker 1: would say, I don't want to ventilator anymore. I don't

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Speaker 1: on more rounds of chemotherapy for my cancer. It's just

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Speaker 1: gotten too painful and I'd rather not continue trying to,

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Speaker 1: you know, have longer life. There's you know, it's not

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Speaker 1: only length of life that matters. Quality of life matters too.

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Speaker 1: And when we when we think about people who are

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Speaker 1: at the end of life and don't want to continuing

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Speaker 1: treatment with dialysis or ventilator or surgery or chemotherapy, we

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Speaker 1: let them say, um, I'm going to choose quality over

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Speaker 1: quality of life over quantity of life. Well, if the

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Speaker 1: state is comfortable doing that for people who are on

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Speaker 1: ventilators in dialysis, why aren't they comfortable with people who

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Speaker 1: want to take a lethal dose of drugs. Because you

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Speaker 1: may have somebody who's just as much at the end

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Speaker 1: of life, just suffering just as much, but isn't on

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Speaker 1: a ventilator, isn' dawn dialysis. And so in that setting,

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Speaker 1: the court would say, why are you choose, you know,

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Speaker 1: distinguishing between these treating them differently and and under when

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Speaker 1: you have a fundamental right at stake that the court

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Speaker 1: would come out differently. I think well, and in thinking

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Speaker 1: about the rationale behind this this state's law prohibiting assistant suicide,

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Speaker 1: the court seemed the this newer court seemed to think that,

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Speaker 1: you know, one of the one of the bases that's

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Speaker 1: rational for the state to prohibit the practice is that, uh,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of possible abuse. You know, people who

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Speaker 1: really aren't terminally ill asking for assistant suicide, of people

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Speaker 1: taking advantage of folks who don't know how to make

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Speaker 1: decisions about this sort of thing that you know, various

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Speaker 1: ways you can imagine it being abused. How does it

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Speaker 1: work in states where it has been legalized? Now, this

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Speaker 1: is one of the troubling parts of the Court's decision.

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Speaker 1: It's easy to understand twenty years ago when the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court faced this question and we had no experience.

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Speaker 1: Oregon was just getting started with its legal legalization, so

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Speaker 1: there was no track record, um, and so you can

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Speaker 1: see why the core would be nervous. And when you

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Speaker 1: go back to the right to refuse treatment, By the

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Speaker 1: time the Cruise in Court case came to the court,

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Speaker 1: we had a decade and a half of experience in

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Speaker 1: the United States with people with turning off ventilators and

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Speaker 1: dialysis and ceding too. So the court could rely on

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Speaker 1: fifteen years of experience and say we can be comfortable

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Speaker 1: recognizing the right. Twenty years ago, you couldn't do that

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Speaker 1: with aid in dying. All you could do is look

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Speaker 1: to the Netherlands and and it's a different law there,

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Speaker 1: and there are concerns there. But now we have nearly

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Speaker 1: twenty years of experience in Oregon, and if there were

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Speaker 1: problems in Oregon, you'd know about it, and the factors

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Speaker 1: there haven't been problems in Oregon, and we don't hear

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Speaker 1: about concerns about Oregon because the way the law is

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Speaker 1: written in Oregon and the other states, and they all

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Speaker 1: have pretty much the same law is you have to

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Speaker 1: be terminally ill, and you have to take the pills yourself,

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Speaker 1: and you have to be mentally competent. You nobody can

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Speaker 1: do this for you, and you have to be terminalial.

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Speaker 1: So we don't have to worry about people who really

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Speaker 1: don't have a serious illness choosing it. We don't have

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Speaker 1: to be worried about people having pills injected and you know,

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Speaker 1: drugs injected into them without their knowledge, and and so

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Speaker 1: that's that's what that's what I think. Is that probably

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Speaker 1: about the decisions something that courts already get involved in,

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Speaker 1: or is this really a better thing for the legislatures

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Speaker 1: to resolve about thirty seconds? Well, David, it's like we

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Speaker 1: have lost David. But we thank David Ornlooker of the

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Speaker 1: u n l V Health Law Program for being with

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Speaker 1: us today on Bloomberg Law.