On July 25, 2014, two individuals with disabilities had an op ed published in a Montana newspaper, the Missoulian, that called for a strong response from disability rights advocates, which came in the form of two great letters published in the same paper. On August 7th, a letter by a disability advocate and former wheelchair racing […]
On December 2, the Missoulian published a letter from Diane Coleman – President and CEO of Not Dead Yet. The title the paper gave the letter was: “National disability rights group concerned Montana could legalize assisted suicide” – the title might surprise you, since a lot of sloppy reporters and spin-doctoring reps of assisted suicide […]
The 22nd Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) seems like the perfect opportunity to set the record straight about how theADA relates to assisted suicide. There’s a rarely articulated idea that assisted suicide is a sort of ADA“reasonable accommodation” to enable people who have serious physical impairments to have equal access to suicide. […]
On July 11, the online publication Solutions, “a project of the Buechner Institute for Governance at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver,” included an article by Diane Carman entitled “Doctors, patient challenge New Mexico’s assisted suicide ban.” The New Mexico court case was brought by Compassion and Choices attorney Kathryn […]
Sorry to all for the short notice, but no sooner is a skirmish in the Hawaii battle won (as distinguished from the battle or the war, so we can’t get complacent0, but the Montana Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing tomorrow (February 9) on two bills related to assisted suicide. Here’s a short summary […]
On September 1, the Missoulian published a story that is becoming all-too-familiar, titled “Fire investigation reveals ‘mercy killing in Libby“: An investigation into a house fire in northwestern Montana took a grisly turn when authorities discovered the elderly couple living there were involved in a murder-suicide that police say was meant to be a mercy […]
First, the Supreme Court Opinion in its entirety can be found at this site in PDF format. As to a “constitutional right” and assisted suicide – the court avoided giving a ruling on that at all (but in doing so voided the lower court finding in that regard). Instead, through some strange permutations in finding […]
I’ve been struggling through the decision by the Montana Supreme Court in Baxter v. Montana. I’m still trying to get my head around the implications of the specific wording used in the decision – a decision which states there is nothing that currently prohibits physician-assisted suicide in Montana law right now (in the court’s interpretation). […]
Last week, this blog devoted some space to the oral arguments held at the Montana Supreme Court over a lower court’s finding of a “constitutional right” to assisted suicide for “terminally ill” people. Since then, there has been surprisingly little discussion about the decision being awaited in Montana. Nevertheless, some people have been moved to […]
Tomorrow (Sept. 2, 2009) the Montana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Montana Attorney General’s challenge of a lower court ruling that defined assisted suicide as a “right.” Today’s edition of the New York Times contains a fairly good account of the stakes – and stakeholders – in the current legal battle in […]
