Supreme Court ruling gives boost to Wisconsin's assisted suicide bill 

Mike Simonson, 1/20/2006
News from 91.3 KUWS (Wisconsin Public Radio)

An assisted suicide bill continues to languish in the Wisconsin legislature. That bill is the same as the Oregon law upheld Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court. Mike Simonson reports from Superior.

State Representatives Fred Risser of Madison and Frank Boyle of Superior have dutifully introduced and re-introduced the so-called "Death with Dignity" assisted suicide bill for the past 12 years. Boyle says the bill allows mentally sound people in pain with a terminal illness to get help to die. He says the Supreme Court ruling gives their bill more legitimacy. "The Supreme Court has always reaffirmed that the Oregon 'Death with Dignity' bill is legal. It's a state's rights issue. With the magnitude of this vote, 6 to 3, on a very conservative court, it reaffirms the individual's right to die a death with dignity. I couldn't be happier."

Boyle says they've already introduced the bill this session, but it isn't scheduled for a hearing. "It is basically there but it is in limbo. I suspect it will be until the politics of this place becomes more compassionate, more humane, more willing to respond to human needs." Justice Antonin Scalia was one of the three dissenting judges in the ruling. He wrote that the federal government has the right to regulate medicine, and medicine shouldn't be used for ending a life.

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