By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer on whether states can legally ban physician-assisted suicide. The case comes from two Appeals Court decisions that found bans on the practice in New York and Washington state were unconstitutional. Groups on both sides of the issue, as well as state attorneys general and the Clinton administration, argued the issue before the court in January.

A group representing Washington state doctors who challenged the ban argued that terminally ill patients have a constitutional liberty to seek a death of their own choosing.

``These dying patients want a peaceful death, they want a humane death and they want a dignified death,'' argued attorney Kathryn Tucker, who represented the doctors. ``And in order to access that kind of death they need the assistance of their physician.''

Speaking against the ban, Washington state Senior Assistant Attorney General William Williams said the states have a right to ban practices that would erode the value of life, that could be abused, and that the state has a right to regulate the medical profession accordingly.

``The state has an important interest in maintaining a clear line between physicians as healers and curers and physicians as instruments of death of their patients,'' Mr. Williams said.

The Clinton administration argued that making assisted suicide a right could lead to it becoming an accepted medical practice for all terminally ill patients.

``It would be, I think, a grave mistake for the court to impose on 50 states such a marked transformation that had never been tried by even a single state,'' U.S. Solicitor Walter Dellinger said.

But Harvard law Professor Laurence Tribe, arguing on behalf of doctors who challenged the New York law, said the system is already operating now ``in the dark'' and a court decision would bring order to the practice.