The Montana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of a trial judge ruling creating a state constitutional right to assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is often depicted by advocates here as applying only to the terminally ill. This is a political tactic to get people used to the idea. Indeed, the arguments being made by the pro assisted suicide advocates in Montana, if accepted, would make the expansion to other suffering categories of people all but inevitable. From the story:
Lawyers in favor of physician-assisted suicide argue that Montana’s Constitution guarantees all citizens the right of dignity and privacy. There is nothing more private, they argue in documents filed before the court, than the decision to end one’s life. Every Montana citizen has the right to dignity, they argue. If a terminal illness – or the medical efforts to relieve pain in the final stages of a terminal illness – rob a citizen of that dignity, the individual has the constitutional right to prescription medicines to end their lives, prescriptions only doctors can give.
If that is so, why should such a” fundamental right” be restricted to a relatively small subset of citizens at any given time? A lot of things can be deemed by a suicidal person to rob him or her of dignity; severe disability, dementia, chronic pain, severe mental anguish that has one, for example, cutting oneself to relieve the pain. And privacy covers all kinds of destructive behavior. Indeed, the mentally ill have been granted the constitutional right in Switzerland to assisted suicide, so too in the Netherlands, and it has been advocated in no less an august journal here than the Hastings Center Report. Moreover, we construe constitutional rights broadly, not narrowly. Kathryn Tucker also came out against creating Oregon-style “protective guidelines,” giving us a clear glimpse of the long term game that is afoot.
Assisted suicide isn’t just about a person who wants to die. It is about creating a license to allow others to help, that is, to conspire in the private killing of a human being. That is a very big deal and it should not be imposed by court fiat.
The arguments begin at 9:30 Mountain Time and can be viewed or listened to through the Montana State Judiciary Web site at www.montanacourts.org.
August 30th, 2009 | 7:20 pm
Wesley, I think that “dignity” is even more of a mysterious term than “privacy”, and you are right to point out the absurdity of applying it in this manner.
Being ‘robbed’ of ones dignity is such a culturally and philosophically influenced scenario, and really a matter of perspective.
For instance, ancient Greek culture would see the rape of a woman to be jsutification enough for her to kill herself to prove her honorability.
Frankly, grades 6 through 12 might provide MORE than enough examples of losing ones dignity.
Furthermore, if you make it a matter of pure subjectivity — that is, each person is the one who decides when it has happened — then you are right: there is absolutely no way to restrict it to only one group of people.
August 31st, 2009 | 10:27 am
Wesley: let’s be accurate here. The judge did not “create” a right. On the basis of a case brought before him the judge determined that the Montana state constitution, as worded, permits physician-assisted suicide. Stop making it sound as if judges pull “new rights” out of the air.
August 31st, 2009 | 11:53 am
HW: You ignore the point that the “right” was determined on the basis of the complex terms ‘privacy’ and –even worse– ‘dignity.’
In that sense, you can say that there a judge did “create a right” by manking a term in the Constitution mean something that is not proper to its use. The use of the term is created by the judge, and therefore the right is created.
September 1st, 2009 | 2:29 pm
Holyterror: No, the terms “privacy” and “dignity” are incorporated in the state constitution, and the judge was simply imparting a reasonable meaning to them within the context of a particular case. It may sound catchy to assert that a judge has legislated from the bench (the usual complaint when a decision doesn’t turn out the way one would like), but it’s really not a very accurate assessment of what went on in Montana. The appellate division of the Montana courts will now decide whether the interpretation of the court below was consistent with the language of the state constitution. If they say it was, then so be it. The people can always amend their constitution if enough of them disagree.
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