Saw this letter from the Montana Family Foundation setting out its argument that, under Baxter v Montana, physicians who administer drugs to a terminally ill patient so as to end their own lives may still be charged with homicide:
Nothing in the Montana Supreme Court's decision prevents prosecutors from investigating and charging suicide-assisters with murder. Under the decision, assisting a suicide continues to be defined as homicide. The court merely said that in some narrow circumstances a physician might (or might not) be able to raise a "consent defense." But a consent defense is for defendants already charged with murder. In real life, suicides involve patients who suffer pressures, abuse, impaired decision-making and other vulnerabilities that don't even qualify as "consent." And nothing prevents lawsuits against doctors and institutions over those messy details.
If you are scratching your head over this argument, especially after reading the Montana court's decision (pdf), which, as far as I can tell, makes no mention of "consent defense," you are not alone. Again, this is verbatim from the court's decision:
The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally patient to die with dignity. That is to say, the patient may use the assistance of his physician to obtain a prescription for a lethal dose of medication that the patient may take his on his own if and when he decides to terminate his life. The patient's right to die with dignity includes protection of the patient's physician from liability under the state's homicide statutes.
Can doctors expect lawsuits over their aid in giving medication to terminally ill patients? Of that I have no doubt. I'm sure the Montana Family Foundation even now is preparing strategies on how to take to court doctors who assist terminally ill patients in ending their lives. All you need is a family member to claim that the patient wasn't "competent" at the time they requested and received life-ending medication. The aim here isn't to change the opinion of Montana voters or craft a law forbidding physician-assisted suicide but to intimidate doctors from working with patients and their constitutional right to death with dignity. After all, even without merit, lawsuits are expensive and possibly damaging to reputations.
In that light, this letter isn't so much an explanation of the law, but a warning shot. |
