Physician Assisted Suicide Ban Proposal In Montana

Montana senator proposes ban on physician assisted suicide, May 30, 2010.

A state senator from Thompson Falls wants to ban physician assisted suicide.  It's part of a bill he's introducing for the upcoming legislative session. 

Republican Senator Greg Hinkle says Montana's law should be clear and simple when it comes to physician assisted suicide.  No doctor can help a person kill themselves.

Hinkle says "What this deals with is the actual act of somebody encouraging somebody, a patient, to have somebody take their life.  Some people say it's a matter of choice and I don't think so, because once that decision is made the choice is no longer the patient's, it belongs to a family member or a doctor or whoever."

Roberta King disagrees.  She wants people to have that choice.  She says she watched her father die a slow, painful death.

She says about her father "He didn't want to die on other peoples terms.  He wanted a little bit of control.  He didn't want to lay and waste.  He wanted to die with some dignity."

King doesn't know why people are against the option. She adds "I'm not sure if it's because they haven't watched somebody die or if because they feel that they are not dying with dignity if they have a little comfortable way of dying."

Hinkle decided to introduce the legislation because of a state supreme court decision last December.  The court didn't rule whether assisted suicide was legal.  It only said doctors had a limited safe harbor when it came to prescribing medicine to patients so patients can take their own life.  So he thinks the legislature should take up the issue.

Roberta's father was a part of that case but died the day the decision was handed down.  She says he didn't die on his terms, "When you're dying, that's the one time you should have the choice if anything it should be what you want, not what other people and their morals want for you."

Hinkle says a family member was told he only had a short while to live.  That was over 30 years ago and he's still alive with great grand kids.  He thinks people could take advantage of a sad person for malicious purposes.  He says "If you're in a depressed state, which some people can be, then they might say I give up instead of fighting it.  Look at how many cases of people with debilitating diseases who are going to fight "

Some feel a bill like this one legislates morality, While others say physician assisted suicide is homicide.  No matter what comes out of the legislature the issue will continue to divide people over what's right for someone else.

By Christian Hauser, NewsChannel 13