Let’s hope Montana’s house passes the bill with alacrity and that the governor signs it.

Pro-assisted-suicide activists like to say the unethical act it is legal in Montana. Strictly speaking, that isn’t true. Some years ago, a muddled Montana supreme court ruling refused to create a state constitutional right to assisted suicide as requested by activists because the Montana constitution’s legislative history made it clear that the court couldn’t. But wanting to legalize it anyway, the judges declared somehow that assisted suicide wasn’t against public policy of the state and that consent to such an act was a defense to a criminal charge.

Montana has been in that muddled legal state ever since, with attempts to either explicitly legalize or criminalize assisted suicide unable to get to the governor’s desk.

Now, the Montana senate has moved the anti-assisted-suicide agenda forward, passing a simple bill that would declare consent to assisted suicide unavailable as a defense by making assisted suicide contrary to Montana public policy. From SB 136:

(2) Consent is ineffective if . . . (d) it is against public policy to permit the conduct. . . .

(3) (a) For the purposes of subsection (2)(d), physician aid in dying is against public policy, and a patient’s consent to physician aid in dying is not a defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician.

(b) (i) For the purposes of this subsection (3), “physician aid in dying” means an act by a physician of PURPOSELY AND KNOWINGLY prescribing a lethal dose of medication to a patient that the patient may self administer to end the patient’s life. (ii) The term does not include an act of withholding or withdrawing a life-sustaining treatment or procedure authorized pursuant to Title 50, chapter 9 or 10, OR THE PROVISION OF COMFORT CARE MEDICATION AND TREATMENT AND OTHER TREATMENTS IN ACCORD WITH REASONABLE MEDICAL STANDARDS PURSUANT TO 50-9-204.”

Simple and succinct.

I am pleased that the authors included the last section. Assisted-suicide activists frequently redefine terms and obfuscate crucial distinctions, such as conflating death after life support is withdrawn or dying as an unintended side effect of pain control or other treatments as equivalent to suicide. That isn’t true, of course, but it causes confusion. If this bill becomes law, they won’t be able to do that and claim the mantle of intellectual honesty.

Let’s hope Montana’s house passes the bill with alacrity and that the governor signs it, making the Treasure State the second (after West Virginia) in recent months to outlaw assisted suicide.