The Associated Press reported 6 December 2008:
Montana Judge: Man Has Right to Assisted Suicide
HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- 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.
State District Court 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.
''It's a major constitutional issue and the Supreme Court should rule on
it,'' said McGrath, who will be sworn in as chief justice of the Montana
Supreme Court in January.
The plaintiff, Robert Baxter, said he was comforted by McCarter's ruling.
''I am glad to know that the court respects my choice to die with
dignity if my situation becomes intolerable,'' the 75-year-old retired
truck driver said in a statement.
Kathryn Tucker, the legal director of patients' right group Compassion &
Choices who helped argue the case, said the court found ''it is the
individual patients who should be entitled to make these critical
decisions for themselves and their families, and not the government.''
The state attorney general's office had argued that intentionally taking
a life was illegal, and that the issue was the responsibility of the
state Legislature.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Anders had argued the state has no
evaluation process, safeguards or regulations to provide guidance or
oversight for doctor-assisted suicide. The state also said it was
premature to declare constitutional rights for a competent, terminally
ill patient because the terms ''competent'' or ''terminally ill'' had
yet to be defined.
The ruling noted that doctors are often asked to ''determine the
competency of their patients for the purposes of guardianship and other
legal proceedings.''
''Whether a patient is terminally ill can also be determined by the
physician as an integral component of the physician-patient
relationship,'' McCarter wrote.
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.
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