Montana Doctors Refusing to be Complicit in Assisted Suicide

Doctors everywhere should emulate the vast majority of physicians in Oregon, Washington, and now Montana, who refuse to participate or be complicit in assisted suicide. A woman with cancer who wanted to kill herself in Montana has died of her disease.  From the story:

A Missoula woman, unable to find a physician willing to prescribe drugs that would hasten her death, has died of ovarian cancer. Janet Murdock died Sunday at age 67. Her death was announced Tuesday by the Denver-based patients’ rights group Compassion & Choices. The group was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that led to a judge’s ruling that physician-assisted suicide is a right protected under the Montana Constitution.

The state is appealing District Judge Dorothy McCarter’s ruling to the Montana Supreme court. McCarter refused to issue a stay pending appeal, and Montana doctors can legally prescribe drugs to end the lives of terminally ill patients. But patients seeking assistance to die have complained they cannot find physicians willing to help them.

I am sorry Murdock died and I hope she received quality care and the good palliation available to people dying of cancer. But I am glad no physician sanctioned a poisonous overdose of drugs as a “medical treatment.”