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. But Montana’s assisted suicide maven, Judge Dorothy McCarter, refused, dismissing a request for a stay of her ruling declaring a constitutional right to assisted suicide. This means because she believes in assisted suicide—unless and until a higher court intervenes—it is now legal for doctors to assist suicides of the terminally ill in Montana and there are no “protective guidelines.” (Come to think of it, that’s more honest, isn’t it?) From the story:
A judge here on Wednesday dismissed a request to freeze her own decision upholding Montana’s right to physician-assisted suicide until the state’s Supreme Court rules on the matter.I have no idea what will happen now—the former attorney general who opposed the case is now on Montana Supreme Court and has (properly) recused himself.
The decision means that “as of today” Montanans have the right to physician-assisted suicide, said Stephen Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion & Choices, a national end-of-life choice group that worked with a now-deceased Billings man who sought to end his life with physician help while battling terminal leukemia.
Helena District Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled in December that the Montana Constitution guarantees both a right to privacy and to human dignity, which includes the right of terminally ill citizens to choose to end their lives with a doctor’s help.
This I do know: Judges are becoming too arrogant for our good as a nation. 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. This is especially important because of all the branches of government, the judicial has the fewest checks and balances, thus requiring some humility on the part of judges for the system to work.
Let’s hope the Supreme Court issues a stay so that this matter can be heard with the gravity and care it deserves.
