I wish I could say I was surprised, but judges have decided they get to decide all of our social issues today. A Montana trial court judge has legalized assisted suicide in Montana. From the story.
A Montana judge has issued a ruling saying residents of the state have the right to doctor-assisted suicide. The ruling issued late Friday by state District Court Judge Dorothy McCarter makes Montana the third state in which doctor-assisted suicide is legal.So it is a constitutional right to have a doctor help poison you to death if you have a terminal illness. I assume there will be an appeal. But why have legislatures when we have judges to make these crucial decisions for us and spare us the democratic debate? The USA is quickly becoming a not very free country.
The judge said Saturday she ruled in a lawsuit filed by a terminally ill Billings man, four physicians and a nonprofit patients rights group, Compassion & Choices. McCarter’s ruling holds that mentally competent, terminally ill Montanans have a right to obtain medications that can be self-administered to bring about a peaceful death if they find their suffering to be unbearable. The ruling also says physicians can prescribe such medication without fear of criminal prosecution.
Update: Here is a more detailed story by the AP:
“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.So the court takes a propaganda buzz term “death with dignity,” and turns it into a constitutional right to suicide because the Montana Constitution uses the word dignity. Unbelievable, but this is what judges are becoming. It is, after all, where the power lies.
So, why not anyone who wants to die? I mean, how can one limit the rights to privacy and dignity to the dying? Believe me, it is coming.
