WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - The question of assisted suicide reached the Supreme Court for the second time in eight years on Wednesday, although the profound issues of professional ethics and personal autonomy that have animated the national debate largely remained outside the courtroom. Instead, lawyers for the federal government and for Oregon, the only state to have authorized physician-assisted suicide, argued over a single question: whether John Ashcroft acted within his authority as attorney general when he decided in 2001 that doctors would lose their federal prescription privileges if they followed the Oregon law's procedures and prescribed lethal doses of...