BOB ABERNETHY: Three years after approving the nation's first physician-assisted suicide law, Oregon voters are being asked to reconsider. On Tuesday the state will decide whether to approve or repeal its controversial death with dignity law. If voters approve, doctors in Oregon, under certain conditions, would be allowed to prescribe a lethal dose of pills to patients with six months or less to live. Jim Linefelder of Oregon Public Broadcasting reports from Portland.

JIM LINEFELDER: As mail-in ballots trickle into county election offices to be tallied on Election Day, November 4, a much narrower debate on doctor-assisted suicide rages in Oregon. Polls show a majority of Oregonians continue to support assisted suicide. With those poll numbers in mind, opponents of assisted suicide are tactically avoiding religious and moral arguments against doctor-assisted suicide, despite the fact that much of their funding comes from Roman Catholic sources. Instead, they've narrowed their focus to charges that suicide by oral barbiturates does not in a minority of cases bring death quickly enough.