State plans to appeal assisted-suicide ruling
By JENNIFER McKEE - IR State Bureau - 12/10/08
Montana’s top court will make the final call on whether Montanans have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide.Attorney General Mike McGrath said Tuesday the state will appeal a recent Helena District Court ruling which upheld the right of terminally-ill Montanans to seek doctor-prescribed medications to end their lives.“Clearly this is an issue that needs to be decided by the (Montana) Supreme Court,” McGrath said Tuesday in an interview with Lee Newspapers.Helena District Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled late Friday that Robert Baxter, a 76-year-old Billings man who had suffered from leukemia for years, had the right to end his life using physician-prescribed drugs. McCarter held that the Montana Constitution, which guarantees both the right of privacy and human dignity, protected Baxter’s right to end his life.Baxter died of his illness Friday, before he found out about the ruling.Kathryn Tucker, of Seattle, legal director of Compassion & Choices, a national nonprofit patients’ rights group that was also involved in Baxter’s suit, said Tuesday she agreed with McGrath that the serious matter deserves review by the state’s highest court.
“We will urge the Supreme Court to affirm (the decision) and I think the chances are they will affirm it,” she said. “But I do think it’s important to have this be a state Supreme Court ruling.”McGrath said the state had not yet formally filed the appeal. He said lawyers expected to do so in the next few days.That appeal could last many months. In the meantime, lawmakers at next month’s 2009 Legislature will also take up the issue. Representative-elect Dick Barrett, D-Missoula, has sponsored a bill that would enshrine McCarter’s decision in state law and better define how physician-assisted suicide would work.Tucker said she thought it was important that lawmakers have such a discussion and begin to spell out how terminally ill Montanans exercise their right to doctor-assisted suicide. She said a reasonable waiting period is important, but cautioned on setting barriers too high.Barrett’s bill will originate in the evenly-split Montana House of Representatives, where it’s likely the bill could die on procedural grounds without the Legislature as a whole ever speaking on the issue.If that happens, Tucker said, Montanans will “still be able to make (an assisted suicide) request and physicians will still be able to write these prescriptions.” Physician-assisted suicide would then become “an unregulated right.”
Reader Comments:
thedukeofhelena wrote on Dec 10, 2008 6:27 AM:
" Let's hope this passes in the Montana SC. Being terminally ill myself, I and too many others should have the right to a physicians help to end our lives when they become too unbearable and painful. Why this has to be appealed in the first place tells me that there are still others out there who deign to tell me when and how I should live my life. Stop being so selfish and pass this constitutional right. "
I agree with the duke, the theocrats will fight this tooth and nail.
By JENNIFER McKEE - IR State Bureau - 12/10/08
Montana’s top court will make the final call on whether Montanans have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide.Attorney General Mike McGrath said Tuesday the state will appeal a recent Helena District Court ruling which upheld the right of terminally-ill Montanans to seek doctor-prescribed medications to end their lives.“Clearly this is an issue that needs to be decided by the (Montana) Supreme Court,” McGrath said Tuesday in an interview with Lee Newspapers.Helena District Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled late Friday that Robert Baxter, a 76-year-old Billings man who had suffered from leukemia for years, had the right to end his life using physician-prescribed drugs. McCarter held that the Montana Constitution, which guarantees both the right of privacy and human dignity, protected Baxter’s right to end his life.Baxter died of his illness Friday, before he found out about the ruling.Kathryn Tucker, of Seattle, legal director of Compassion & Choices, a national nonprofit patients’ rights group that was also involved in Baxter’s suit, said Tuesday she agreed with McGrath that the serious matter deserves review by the state’s highest court.
“We will urge the Supreme Court to affirm (the decision) and I think the chances are they will affirm it,” she said. “But I do think it’s important to have this be a state Supreme Court ruling.”McGrath said the state had not yet formally filed the appeal. He said lawyers expected to do so in the next few days.That appeal could last many months. In the meantime, lawmakers at next month’s 2009 Legislature will also take up the issue. Representative-elect Dick Barrett, D-Missoula, has sponsored a bill that would enshrine McCarter’s decision in state law and better define how physician-assisted suicide would work.Tucker said she thought it was important that lawmakers have such a discussion and begin to spell out how terminally ill Montanans exercise their right to doctor-assisted suicide. She said a reasonable waiting period is important, but cautioned on setting barriers too high.Barrett’s bill will originate in the evenly-split Montana House of Representatives, where it’s likely the bill could die on procedural grounds without the Legislature as a whole ever speaking on the issue.If that happens, Tucker said, Montanans will “still be able to make (an assisted suicide) request and physicians will still be able to write these prescriptions.” Physician-assisted suicide would then become “an unregulated right.”
Reader Comments:
thedukeofhelena wrote on Dec 10, 2008 6:27 AM:
" Let's hope this passes in the Montana SC. Being terminally ill myself, I and too many others should have the right to a physicians help to end our lives when they become too unbearable and painful. Why this has to be appealed in the first place tells me that there are still others out there who deign to tell me when and how I should live my life. Stop being so selfish and pass this constitutional right. "
I agree with the duke, the theocrats will fight this tooth and nail.
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