WASHINGTON (AP) - The US Supreme Court upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law yesterday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that a federal drug law does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people. New Chief Justice John Roberts backed the Bush administration, dissenting for the first time.

The administration improperly tried to use a drug law to punish Oregon doctors who proscribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court majority said.
None of the other 49 states has a similar law.

Oregon is one of four places in the world that legally authorise active assistance in dying of patients, according to the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO).

In the Netherlands, voluntary and doctor-assisted euthanasia had been permitted by the courts since 1984 and formally allowed under the law since April 2002. Belgium and Switzerland also permit euthanasia. But the conditions under which euthanasia is performed differ in each place where the practice is permitted.

Countries with specific laws against assisted suicide include Norway, where the practice carries a criminal charge of accessory to murder, according to ERGO. Russia sentenced two teens in 2004 for attmepting to kill a woman they say, asked them to kill her, in what was described as the country's first euthanasia case. There is no specific law against the practice in most countries.

The Bush administration improperly tried to use a drug law to punish Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court majority said.

"Congress did not have this far-reaching intent to alter the federal-state balance," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

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