To die on your own terms a right?

McGrath seeks suspension of right-to-die ruling

AG McGrath hopes to stop anyone or at least postpone people from using their right to die. He plans to prolong the suffering of terminally ill Montanans who wish to end their lives with medical assistance.

I quess he doesn't want anyone going to hell. Becasue of course in the bible it says suicide is wrong. In most cases it is, but in this situation it's called mercy. As usual the religious try use the bible too determine what is moral and what is not, when in fact it is far from giving good advice.

This may sound callous, but do people realize how expensive it is to die in the U. S. of A.? Why should a dying person pay big bucks to a hospital to keep them alive as long as possible against their will. That's callous and immoral.

Coming Out Gay in Montana

This is about Bridget’s Your Turn editorial in the IR 12/10/08

From this editorial, I learned that the Montana Legislature considered requiring all gay and lesbians to register as sex offenders. Outrageous! The last decade was a dark time under Republican rule.

Bridget said she was told by the clergy say she ‘must be silent and celibate’, and that her wish to marry another woman was wrong and made her ‘less deserving of God’s love’.
She said she despaired over this. I say she was disparaged.

I always wondered how or why people like her would want the love of a God such as this.

She despairs again over the passage of Prop 8 in California.
It is because of these laws and the public perception of gays why there is a higher incidence of substance abuse, depression and suicide in her social group. It’s true. But appealing to the “true” Christians by being a gay Christian doesn’t work. If you’re a Christian then one has to understand why the true believers are so against the gay community attempts at marriage.

She quotes the bible and pleads for people to ignore the Old Testament and only heed what Jesus says about our neighbors and the poor.

Such as, “love your neighbor as yourself”, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, and to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

She says, “We must reach across the imagined divides between “liberal” and “conservative” and honor and respect each other as humans.” It is and never will be an imagined divide. People have been killing each other over this so called imagined divide. It’s real and dangerous.

For generations and today many still question what Christianity is or means? There is a theory Jesus meant you and I must still follow the law and then I learned Paul claimed we are not to follow the law and the only way to salvation was through Jesus. This was his attempt to remove the Jews from his new religion. He wanted as little connection to the Old Testament as possible. Christianity was to be the religion for the gentiles. Today it’s common to hear the evangelicals call themselves Judeo-Christians. This way they can use the law to suppress the very people supposedly Christ set free.

This only goes to show how the ‘faithful’ believe whatever is convenient.

Bridget Whearty, a Helena native had a feature story about her marriage in California.

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/06/19/local/top/50lo_080619_marriage.txt

Dangerous legislation per Beth

By Beth Emter - 12/10/08
Montanans should be aware of very dangerous legislation currently sponsored by Max Baucus and Jon Tester — the Freedom of Choice Act (S.1173).

The Freedom of Choice Act is deceiving in its very title. FOCA would deprive Montanans, as well as the American people in all 50 states of the freedom we now have to enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry. It would also counteract any and all sincere efforts by government to reduce abortions in our country. FOCA as it is currently written would take away parental consent laws, laws requiring abortions be performed only by licensed physicians and laws limiting particular abortion procedures like partial birth abortion. FOCA would recklessly disallow states the freedom to regulate abortion as their citizens see appropriate. Additionally, FOCA would require Catholic hospitals that provide childbirth and other health care services to provide abortions, thus shutting down health care facilities in some of Montana’s most remote communities.

Is this freedom? No. Is this choice for Montanans? No. FOCA is simply wrong for Montana. We cannot reduce abortions by promoting abortion.

Beth Emter

29 Hidden Valley Loop

Clancy

Company Christmas Parties

For some reason we are having our office Christmas party mid-January. It would be nice if they called it a New Years party. I wish all Christmas parties would become New Years Parties instead. I am not alone in this I am sure.
Supposedly attending a Company sponsored Christmas party is up to the employee. But, is it really? No! Peer pressure forces one and all to celebrate Christmas whether they like it or not. It is not good for your career if you do not play along.

I will from now on respond to "Have a Merry Christmas" with "Have a Happy New Year" not "Happy Holidays"

Assisted-Suicide in Montana

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.