EDITORIAL : TIMELY INTERVENTION SUPREME COURT WILL REVIEW ISSUE OF DOCTOR-ASSISTED SUICIDES.

It was encouraging to see the U.S. Supreme Court enter the debate over doctor-assisted suicides. Earlier decisions by lower courts had left the law in a muddle.

The court said Tuesday that it will decide - sometime in the next 10 months - whether the states of New York and Washington may ban doctors from prescribing life-ending drugs for mentally competent, terminally ill adults who no longer wish to live.

Earlier this year, the California-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Washington state law. Overruling a lower court that had found the law acceptable, the appeals court said the law is unconstitutional because it violates due-process rights by barring doctors from ``prescribing life-ending medication for use by terminally ill, competent adults who wish to hasten their own deaths.''

Another appeals court invalidated the New York law on the grounds that it is discriminatory to refuse to let terminally ill patients end their lives with medication while allowing other dying patients to end their lives by granting their requests that life-support systems be disconnected.

In other words, the New York appeals court couldn't see the distinction between killing and not prolonging life. But there is a big difference. Asking a doctor to take deliberate action to hasten death is quite different from a patient dying naturally after refusing intrusive, life-sustaining medical treatment. It's too bad the appellate judges had a hard time separating the two.

Regardless, states have excellent reasons to avoid promoting suicide. Physician-assisted suicide conflicts with doctors' Hippocratic Oath, such as the pledge to do no harm. The practice may lead to psychological pressure on the elderly and infirm to consent to their own premature deaths. And some who consent to death may not be mentally competent to make such irreversible decisions.

Those on public assistance, the disabled or members of minority groups could face additional pressure to terminate a prolonged illness through suicide.

In short, there's a terrible risk of adopting practices that cheapen human life. Society would be declaring that human life no longer has inherent value, but is valuable only as long as living is convenient. Such dramatic shifts in values are a predictable result of physician-assisted suicide.

States do have compelling reasons not to promote suicide, and Washington and New York were right to appeal to the Supreme Court. We are hopeful that the justices will assert the states' interests in keeping doctors from becoming executioners and avoiding situations that put seriously ill patients at greater risk of death.