Editorial: Now that Oregon's Death With Dignity Act has won at the nation's highest court, that should end the debate.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., found just the right words last week to gracefully end his opposition to Oregon's assisted suicide law after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it.

"The judgment of Oregon's voters has been affirmed," he said. "I accept the Supreme Court's decision, and Congress should do the same."

Indeed, Congress should let it be. The issue is settled, or should be, now that the nation's highest court has rebuffed the Bush administration's attack on the groundbreaking Oregon law.

Like Smith, we were not among supporters of physician-assisted suicide when Oregon voters approved the law in 1994, or when they overwhelmingly rejected its proposed repeal in 1997.

But by the time the Supreme Court finally had its say last Tuesday, Oregon had rolled up nearly a decade of experience with this law. Many of our practical fears did not come to pass during these years of experience.

Terminally ill people didn't flock to Oregon from other states to end their lives by assisted suicide.

Relatively few patients actually followed through with the option -- just 208 in the first seven years of the program.

Safeguards against abuses appeared to be effective.

Warnings about lethal doses of pills not working as intended proved overblown.

The rigor and openness of the program's reporting system do remain concerns. Patient privacy must be protected, but that shouldn't be an obstacle to Oregonians receiving more thorough information about the program than they're getting now.

Those concerns, however, don't alter the fact that the debate over assisted suicide has changed dramatically since it began in this state 12 years ago. This conversation has revolutionized public attitudes about palliative care at the end of life. Oregon finds itself at the forefront of a fast-moving national sea change that manifested itself in Florida's Terri Schiavo case and in movements now under way in other states pursuing assisted-suicide laws of their own.

We see the focus on these issues as a positive. Their profound moral implications will continue to create a divide, but a convincing majority of Oregonians have made it clear they want the end-of-life choice and control that this law provides for the terminally ill.

Like it or not, it's Oregon's right to have such a law. That's why we opposed the 2001 move by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to kill the Oregon law. He sought to do so by punishing doctors who prescribed federally controlled drugs to help terminally ill patients die. That grossly exceeded his authority, in our view, and it was reassuring to see the Supreme Court agree in its 6-3 ruling.

It's also heartening to see that Sen. Smith has apparently joined us in accepting the assisted-suicide issue as settled in Oregon. We hope he will follow up his statements on the subject by helping to fend off threatened attempts in Congress to block Oregon's law.

The people of this state have spoken. The lower courts and appellate courts have spoken. Now a solid majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have spoken.

It's time to move on.

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