NRL News
Page 8
September 2009
Volume 36
Issue 9

Physician-Assisted Suicide Case Heard by Montana Supreme Court
BY Liz Townsend

The Montana Supreme Court heard arguments September 2 in a case involving physician-assisted suicide. Expected to issue a decision later this year, the Court will consider whether to uphold a December lower court ruling that the state constitution includes the right to assisted suicide, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Montana law bans physicians or anyone else from helping someone to commit suicide. However, District Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled December 5 that the Montana constitution’s protections of “individual privacy and human dignity” required terminally ill people to be allowed to kill themselves with a doctor’s assistance, according to the AP.

The case was initially brought by Robert Baxter, 76, a leukemia patient who wanted a physician to prescribe medication to cause his own death, the Billings Gazette reported. Baxter died of natural causes on the same day McCarter issued her ruling.

Since McCarter would not issue a stay of her ruling until the case is decided in the highest court, Montanans right now could receive lethal prescriptions from doctors. But the AP reported that anecdotal evidence shows that physicians have not been willing to participate in patients’ deaths, and the Montana Medical Association adopted a policy stating it “does not condone the deliberate act of precipitating the death of patient.”

The state attorney general’s office appealed the district court ruling to the state Supreme Court. At the September 2 hearing, State Solicitor Anthony Johnstone argued that “physician-assisted suicide violates medical ethics and state homicide laws because the intent is for the patient to die,” according to the AP.

In court documents, the attorney general’s office expanded on its position that the state constitution does not encompass a “right” to be killed with the help of a physician. “The questions posed are important, and each person’s reactions to them are deeply felt, but the answers are not to be found anywhere in the history, text, or interpretation of the Montana Constitution,” wrote Attorney General Steve Bullock, AHN reported.

“Plaintiffs debate at length the semantic questions surrounding the unspecified acts they call ‘aid in dying.’ This Court, however, must confront a legal question that euphemisms cannot illuminate: whether the homicide laws are unconstitutional across a broad set of vaguely defined circumstances,” Bullock argued.

The attorney general’s opposition to legalized physician-assisted suicide was joined by other groups who filed amicus briefs. In their brief, Not Dead Yet and other disability-rights groups argued that rather than granting them “dignity,” assisted suicide leaves vulnerable people open to abuses and involuntary death.

“People with disabilities in Montana are seriously threatened by physician-assisted suicide,” the groups wrote. “Amici ask the Court to believe them when they state that disability-based discrimination in this culture is deep-seated, pervasive and overwhelming. People with disabilities request this Court to recognize that cloaked in the false rhetoric of ‘death with dignity,’ physician assisted suicide threatens the civil rights of a profoundly oppressed and marginalized people.”

Twenty-eight state legislators also filed a brief in opposition, insisting that the court should not legalize physician-assisted suicide without regulations, oversight, or review by the legislature. “The District Court decision endangers our citizens and our most vulnerable citizens at that without so much as even contemplating the potential abuses and social harms that may result,” the legislators wrote, according to the AP. “That is truly an analysis that should be left for the Legislature.”

The Montana Catholic Conference wrote in its amicus brief. “Montana’s longstanding tradition of protecting its citizens against intentional killing should not be suspended for any group of citizens.” In addition, “It will facilitate the destruction of people who are sick, instead of reasonably and compassionately addressing their health problems. ... It will undermine attempts to treat the true underlying causes of suicide requests, and result in deaths that are not truly voluntary or consensual.”