Georgia lawmakers meant to do the right thing in 1994 when they enacted a law forbidding people to advertise offers to help someone commit suicide. The worthy goal was to block so-called "assisted suicides" -- such as those performed by Dr. Jack Kevorkian -- from happening in Georgia.
But while Georgia made it a felony to advertise assisted suicide, lawmakers failed to forbid the act of assisted suicide itself. And so now, the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the rightly motivated but badly composed law violates freedom of speech.
Sadly, that ruling means members of a "right-to-die" network who were charged in 2009 with helping a cancer patient kill himself will not stand trial.
The patient in question did not have terminal cancer. In fact, Georgia authorities determined that he was making a recovery. Aiding suicide would be wrong even if a person had a terminal illness, but it is even more disturbing when the person is on the mend.
That was not, however, the only disturbing thing authorities said they found in their investigation of the assisted suicide organization, which called itself the Final Exit Network.
An undercover agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation pretended to have cancer and told the Final Exit Network he wanted to die. The Associated Press reported in 2010 that one of the suspects allegedly explained to the undercover agent the procedure that would be used to kill him. The suspect "allegedly demonstrated how he would hold down the agent's hands to prohibit him from removing" a bag that would be placed over his head.
That points to one of the many harrowing reasons why assisted suicide should not be legal: the possibility that someone will change his mind at the last minute, but that it will be too late to stop. There is also the danger that mentally incompetent people will be aided in committing suicide. In some cases, the mentally incompetent were prescribed lethal doses of drugs in Oregon after that state permitted assisted suicide.
As for Georgia, the case against the assisted suicide group there has collapsed with the court ruling striking down the poorly written Georgia law.
But the Georgia Supreme Court made it clear that lawmakers can enact a carefully crafted law explicitly forbidding assisted suicide.
They should do so quickly, and Gov. Nathan Deal should sign it into law.
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