TRISH CONRAD (Assisted Suicide Opponent): Well, I think that when a terminally ill patient gets a bottle full of barbiturate pills, they're not going to be wondering what the Catholic Church thought at any particular point. They're going to be wondering whether or not they can get all those pills down, and if they'll work the way that they were promised.
LINEFELDER: Assisted suicide proponents say voters have already spoken on the issue of assisted suicide.
BARBARA COOMBS LEE (Assisted Suicide Proponent): We mean that the measure to repeal the Oregon Death with Dignity Act is fatally flawed. It's flawed that Oregonians should have to vote on this again.
LINEFELDER: But no matter what voters decide November 4, the debate itself already has many doctors placing greater emphasis on pain management and comfort care for dying patients.
Dr.
SUSAN W. TOLLE (Medical Ethicist): It really was a wake-up call in medicine. It got doctors who hadn't been thinking a lot about this issue paying more attention.
LINEFELDER: I'm Jim Linefelder in Portland.
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.
