Montana Judge: Man Has Right to Assisted Suicide

ABC News ^ | 12/6/08 | Amy Beth Hanson/AP

[wagglebee]

A Montana judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in the state, a decision likely to be appealed as the state argues that the Legislature, not the court, should decide whether terminally ill patients have the right to take their own life.

Judge Dorothy McCarter issued the ruling late Friday in the case of a Billings man with terminal cancer, who had sued the state with four physicians that treat terminally ill patients and a nonprofit patients' rights group.

"The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill) patient to die with dignity," McCarter said in the ruling.

It also said that those patients had the right to obtain self-administered medications to hasten death if they find their suffering to be unbearable, and that physicians can prescribe such medication without fear of prosecution.

"The patient's right to die with dignity includes protection of the patient's physician from liability under the state's homicide statutes," the judge wrote.

Attorney General Mike McGrath said Saturday that attorneys in his office would discuss the ruling next week and expected the state will appeal the ruling.

[wagglebee]

Once again, the courts are doing the left's bidding.

[wagglebee]

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[wagglebee]

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[driftdiver]

“a decision likely to be appealed as the state argues that the Legislature, not the court, should decide whether terminally ill patients have the right to take their own life.”

You mean judges don’t make the law? Someone should maybe tell the hucksters cause they’ve been making law for 30 +years.

[Soliton]

I believe that the right to life includes the right to opt out of it

[sionnsar]

"McCarter's ruling makes Montana the third state after Oregon and Washington to allow doctor-assisted suicides. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide but did nothing to prevent states from legalizing the process."

Say WA? Evergreen State ping

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[Steamburg]

The good news: At least, this time the courts are siding with the rights of an individual.
The bad news: It will soon be the right of the collective to decide your worth.

[pray4liberty]

Here we go again with the "right to privacy" caveat which will, eventually, make legal every form of perversion that you can think of, now and in the future.

John Hagee warned about this in one of his sermons when sodomy was overturned in court (on this privacy basis), and boy was he right.

[beandog]

I think people should have the right to kill themselves but they don’t have the right to have somebody else do it for them. That’s just legalized murder, IMO.

[HangnJudge]

Lovely discussion at USAToday on this subject...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-06-assisted-suicide_N.htm

[Soliton]

I think people should have the right to kill themselves but they don’t have the right to have somebody else do it for them.

If my father-in-law had known that he would sink into alzheimer's and cost his wife his lif savings, he would have begged someone to kill him.

[Mr.Grumble]

Indeed, don’t they still have guns in Montana? I would say plastic sacks, but I think environmentalists banned all of those by now.

[little jeremiah]

Seems as though half the country’s ills are caused or at least aided and abetted by leftist, infernal-minded judges. And I mean infernal literally.

[little jeremiah]

People can already kill themselves with impunity. What is the law going to do - arrest people after they commit suicide? What they want to do is have the government and medical profession involved, which is but a few steps away from the Nazi’s final solution.

[beandog]

In my state if you threaten suicide you can be committed against your will.

[SouthDixie]

It never ceases to amaze me, some want to die and some want to live forever...God Bless the Kabbalah.

[wagglebee]

In my state if you threaten suicide you can be committed against your will.

That is because people who are suicidal are almost without exception suffering from depression or some other mental illness which is completely treatable.

Are you suggesting that depressed people should simply be ignored and allowed to commit suicide?

[DejaJude]

I believe that the right to life includes the right to opt out of it

I believe that free will includes the right to opt out of God's law. I, for one, would not want to chose that option. But that is my choice.

[Seruzawa]

Where the heck do all these fascist judges come from? And, no, I don’t think that playing the fascist card is hyperbole in these cases. Who appointed these black robed shysters as kings?

[wagglebee]

I believe that free will includes the right to opt out of God's law. I, for one, would not want to chose that option. But that is my choice.

Very well said!