Montana: Assisted Suicide Ruled Legal

In the United States, the idea of physician assisted suicide is almost as controversial, if not just as controversial as abortion. Some people will argue that it is murder, while others will say that it allows a person to die with dignity, on their own terms. Doctors might argue that it violates the hypocratic oath, which is a pledge to do everything and anything possible to keep a patient alive.

In Montana a judge declared that physician assisted suicide is legal within the state. However, this decision is probably going to get appealed on the basis that the Legislature should decide whether or not terminally ill patients have to right to end their life, or suffer through a miserable death.

After a man with terminal cancer sued the state with four physicians and a non-profit organization for patients' rights, Judge Dorothy McCarter issued the ruling yesterday. McCarter justified her ruling on the ground that the constitutional rights of Montana guarantees individual privacy and human dignity, thus, a competent terminally ill patient can choose to end their life. This allowed physicians to prescribe medications that will yield death without suffering, free from prosecution of the law. Attorney General Mike McGrath, who will be sworn into the Montana Supreme Court in January, said that the Supreme Court should rule on it, and this issue will be appealed next week.

The man who sued the state, Robert Baxter, felt comforted by the ruling, knowing that if his condition worsens, he will be able to end his life on his terms. The government should not decide whether or not a person can end their life, it should be a personal decision left between the patient and their family and friends. However, Assisent Attorney General Jennifer Anders argued that the state has no evaluation process to see if the patient truly is terminal, and no guidelines set in stone that decipher if the patient is "competent".

After Oregon and Washington, Montana is now the third state to legalize physician assisted suicide. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court said that physician assisted suicide was illegal, but never prevented states from legalizing it. I think that too many people view physician assisted as right or wrong, just as people do with abortion. But what is overlooked is that fact that both of these issues are privacy issues. Whether or not you support or oppose either issue is based on your personal beliefs, but you must also respect the privacy of others. People try to justify being opposed to physician assisted suicide by calling it murder, but they are just trying to coerse others into thinking the way they do. The bottom line is that this is a privacy issue, and what other people decide to do will have no impact on anyone but themselves.

I think that the slant of this article is slightly liberal. It provided quotes from both sides of the argument, but the undertone of the article suggests that the writer was liberal. I feel that the article provided a stronger argument for supporting physician assisted suicide.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/06/montana-assisted-suicide_n_148994.html