Lawmakers in Montana have never enacted a law permitting doctors to hasten the deaths of patients through “assisted suicide.” Yet disturbingly, the Montana Supreme Court has partially upheld a lower-court ruling that such a “right” exists.
The lower court had bizarrely declared that Montana’s Constitution actually guaranteed a right to assisted suicide, though it said nothing of the kind.
The only silver lining to the Montana Supreme Court’s recent decision is that the court merely said it couldn’t find anything in the law specifically forbidding the practice. That means that lawmakers in Montana can now enact a law to prevent doctors from “playing God” with patients’ lives. They should not allow “assisted suicide.”
We are sympathetic to any patient who is suffering from a serious illness. But physicians should “do no harm” and should not actively hasten the deaths of patients, some of whom may not be in any frame of mind where they can even make such a decision. And some could possibly recover.