Posted on 01/09/2009 11:51:48 AM PST by wagglebee
Helena, MT (LifeNews.com) -- Montana officially became the third state to allow assisted suicide as a state judge ruled again on the issue. Helena District Judge Dorothy McCarter handed down her ruling allowing the practice in December and, this week, ruled again by dismissing a request for an injunction during the appeal.
McCarter decided in December that a terminally ill patient Robert Baxter and mentally competent, terminally ill Montana residents like him can self-administer lethal drugs given to them in prescriptions from willing doctors.
Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath has filed an appeal of the decision and asked Judge McCarter for a temporary injunction preventing assisted suicides from occurring while the appeal proceeds.
McCarter declined and her ruling means assisted suicides can move ahead as of Wednesday without patients or doctors fearing prosecution.
Wesley J. Smith, an attorney who is a leading bioethics watchdog, condemned McCarter's refusal to stop assisted suicides while the case moves along.
"When a very controversial ruling comes down from our rulers in black robes, it is customary that pending an appeal to the highest court, the decision be stayed--that is suspended--until the final decision from a higher court is in," he said.
"Judges are becoming too arrogant for our good as a nation," Smith lamented. "Culture-rending changes in law and morality should not be decided undemocratically by promoting a judge's own ideology through wrenching and twisting constitutional terms to mean things that were not intended when they were enacted."
The case has also taken an odd twist as McGrath has since been sworn in as the chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court, but has said he will recuse himself once the high court takes the appeal.
Another battle could also come into play in the state legislature as Rep. Dick Barrett, a Missoula Democrat, has filed legislation that put McCarter's ruling into law with a bill to officially legally assisted suicide.
McCarter had initially misused the privacy provision in the state Constitution, intended to oppose wiretapping and other surveillance, to say that patients have a right to an assisted suicide without legal consequences.
Following the decision, the Montana Medical Association indicated it refused to get involved and came under fire for not submitting an amicus brief supporting McCarter's attempt to overturn the ruling.
Montana joins Oregon and Washington as the only three states in the nation to allow assisted suicides.
And it should come as no surprise that this is the left's preferred method for advancing their evil agenda.
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They just sanctioned a law that says government can murder at will. Good going Montana. Not
Pro-Life Ping
Seems to me this law allows someone claiming to be little more than a witchdoctor to kill someone without consequences.
There is a vast difference between a group of greedy heirs who want to disconnect gramps from the old ventilator to get their hands on the family fortune and some individual who wants to play the ultimate martyr role and pull the curtain on a personal drama. I say good riddance and stop the whining once and for all.
And no, I have no pity for those who pity themselves.
personally I don’t have a problem with this. If I were to come down with a horible condition that odds of survival were nill, I would want to bow out as I see fit. However, I can see the catch 22 that this puts doctors into.
Yep
ha ha ha,
What are people talking about when they say that there is a slippery slope?
This argument is just a smoke screen from people who need to interfere with man's God given right of self determination. There is no moral difference between people using this argument and those who want to take guns away from us all because guns can kill.
Big Die Country
In the legal landscape, there will be found a lake where people go on a fishing expedition, the lake is at the bottom of a slippery slope where all who fall behind on their hard row to hoe experience a chilling effect; this land is known as the lawn of good intentions...
I tend to agree.
I am strongly opposed to suicide on moral and theological grounds.
The horror -— murder, really -— that ocurred in Florida with the dehydration of Terri Schiavo sickens me -— because it was not, at all clear that such was her choice. (I think her husband set it up to kill her, in fact.)
But if a rational adult choses to do this, that’s between them and G-d.
Physician assisted suicide is part of the RATs “universal health care” plan as a way to ration expensive medical treatments for the elderly and disabled.
Now do you see the problem with what's going on there ~ it's just a step beyond Oregon's strange law, but only just.....
I think the slippery slope has arrived.
Now do you see the problem with what's going on there ~ it's just a step beyond Oregon's strange law, but only just.....
I think the slippery slope has arrived.
They have dumbed down America enough to accept non thinking.
Yup, you, me and Dr. Gregory House are in agreement.
there is indeed a slippery slope.
Once the idea that suicide is an honorable choice for anyone whose life is miserable, you see an increase in suicides in all ages.
You then get pressure on those who see they are burdening their caretakers.
Often people say in despair: I wish I could die. Usually others say no, you are loved, we can stop the pain/illness or we want to care for you.
Now you see” You want to die? I’ll help you” which to a person in depression says: Yes, you are useless. Die for my sake.
Then the idea spreads that if you are sick/handicapped you ought to die. There is a Dame in the UK who essentially says if you have Alzheimers, you owe it to the country to die, because you are wasting the time and effort of your caretakers, and cost the state money.
Then you have people like ambulance drivers in a case in the UK where they didn’t help a dying man becausea he was handicapped......
Indeed, the handicapped are the main ones who are against these laws: Because they know a lot of perfect people, including doctors and nurses, would be glad to “help them die” if they thought they could get away with it, because they project their own feelings on the handicapped.
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