Once again the controversial issue of euthanasia is making the news; this
time in the US state of Montana. This is an issue with which I personally
have struggled for many years.

While it is easy for us to say that we oppose euthanasia on religious
grounds when we are healthy and not in any pain, would we think, feel and
react the same if we personally had some terminal illness and were
constantly in extreme pain? Would our religious convictions weaken, and
would we desire euthanasia?

Or what if one of our loved ones was in extreme, continual pain from some
terminal illness? What if they also know the Lord? Would it be an act of
mercy and compassion on our part to help them to end their suffering sooner
so that they can go to be with the Lord, or would it be a sin to assist
them?

What do you think?

Following is an article from the New York Times.


Montana Court to Rule on Assisted Suicide Case

By KIRK JOHNSON - NYT

August 31, 2009

HELENA, Mont. -- Robert Baxter was by all accounts a tough man. Even in the
end, last year, as lymphocytic leukemia was killing him, Mr. Baxter, a
76-year-old retired truck driver from Billings, Mont., fought on. But by
then he was struggling not for life, but for the right to die with help from
his doctor.

"He yearned for death," his daughter, Roberta King, said in a court
affidavit describing her father's final agonized months.

Now, in death, Mr. Baxter is at the center of a right-to-die debate that
could make Montana the first state in the country to declare that medical
aid in dying is a protected right under a state constitution.

The state's highest court on Wednesday will take up Mr. Baxter's claim that
a doctor's refusal to help him die violated his rights under Montana's
Constitution -- and lawyers on both sides say the chances are good that he
will prevail.

Washington and Oregon allow physicians to help terminally ill people hasten
their deaths, but in those states the laws were approved by voters in
statewide referendums, and neither state's highest court has examined the
issue of a constitutional right to die.

In Montana, the question will be decided by the seven-member State Supreme
Court. A lower-court judge ruled in Mr. Baxter's favor last December -- on
the very day Mr. Baxter died -- and the State of Montana appealed the
ruling.

The legal foundation for both sides is a free-spirited,
libertarian-tinctured State Constitution written in 1972 at the height of a
privacy-rights movement that swept through this part of the West in the
aftermath of the 1960s. Echoes of a righteous era are reflected in language
about keeping government at bay and maintaining individual autonomy and
dignity.

"The dignity of the human being is inviolable," the drafters declared.

Lawyers on both sides say the Montana Supreme Court has a tradition of
interpreting the State Constitution with that sentiment in mind, with
privacy rights and personal liberty often outweighing other concerns. The
court ruled in 1997, for example, that Montana's anti-sodomy laws were
unconstitutional invasions of privacy.

The United States Supreme Court followed Montana's lead in 2003 in reversing
one of its own decisions that had found no such protections for same-sex
couples under the United States Constitution. In 1999 the Montana court held
that a woman's right to choose abortion was protected, including the choice
of her medical provider.

Because the Baxter case involves only the State Constitution, the Montana
Supreme Court will have the final word, with no appeal possible to the
United States Supreme Court.

But a legal case like the one now under consideration ventures to the
frontiers of the human experience -- why people choose to die and what role
government should play at such moments -- and invariably pulls on diverse
social and political threads. And here again, a list of unusual Montana
factors have elevated and complicated the debate.

Montana already has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, for
example. As a huge state with a small population -- about one million people
in an area more than half the size of Texas -- there are pockets of deep
rural life where access to health care, in living or dying, is severely
limited.

A substantial American Indian minority, with health care and suicide issues
of its own, has also weighed in as to whether a right for some is a right
for all.

"There are moral arguments, philosophical arguments on both sides,
bioethical arguments on both sides, even medical and public health arguments
on both sides," Anthony Johnstone, the state solicitor at the Montana
attorney general's office, who will argue the case for the state, said in
defense of current laws that prohibit physician-assisted death.

The state argues that the Constitution confers no right to aid in ending
one's life.

Some people speaking out about the case, like Bob Liston, are also
expressing sentiments that one might not expect.

Mr. Liston, 54, a research associate at the University of Montana who has
spent most of the last 40 years in a wheelchair because of an auto accident,
has been a passionate advocate for the disabled in arguing for autonomy and
respect.

But this time he is arguing just as passionately on the other side,
contending that aid in dying could backfire on people with debilitating
conditions, leading not to more autonomy, but less. Mr. Liston, an organizer
for a national disability-rights group called Not Dead Yet, said he
envisioned people like himself being nudged toward life-ending choices by
their doctors or families, out of compassion or perhaps convenience.

"People with disabilities don't get to live with dignity, let alone die with
dignity," he said.

Other opponents of a "right to die well," as some are calling the argument
made by Mr. Baxter and the group of physicians who joined him as plaintiffs,
say that rural Montanans could be left out, too.

In places like Scobey, in the state's far northeast corner, where Julie
French lives, the population density is about one person per square mile.
Minimal health care is hours away.

"Before we deal with assisted suicide, we should make sure first and
foremost that everybody has equal access," said Ms. French, a Democratic
state legislator who opposes an expansion of death rights. "It is not simply
whether everyone has a right to choose; it's whether they are given all the
choices."

Religious divisions have also surfaced, with many Roman Catholics and
evangelicals siding with the state -- arguing that the homicide statutes
could be weakened if a right to assisted death is affirmed by the court --
while some liberal church leaders speak out on behalf of what they say are
matters of choice.

"I don't think God created us to be string puppets," said John C. Board, an
Episcopal deacon at a church in Helena who supports the Baxter claim. "If we
say that God has given everyone free will, that means God has given you the
opportunity to do things right and do things wrong."

Kathryn L. Tucker, co-counsel for Mr. Baxter's estate and the other
plaintiffs, says this case is also about boundaries.

At a time when the limits, if not failings, of medicine are part of the
national debate about health care reform, Ms. Tucker said, what is the power
of the individual to set his or her own course?

"This case is part of a journey," said Ms. Tucker, who is director of legal
affairs for Compassion and Choices, a national group that advocates to
protect and expand the rights of the terminally ill and is also one of the
plaintiffs. "It's about empowering patients and giving them the right to
decide when they have suffered enough."


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