Selling Assisted Suicide State to State

As director of legal affairs for Compassion & Choices, [Kathryn Tucker] peruses state constitutions and laws to see if they address assisted suicide, which she refers to euphemistically as “aid in dying.”

So far, Washington and Oregon are the only states that have legalized assisted suicide in this country. Some believe that Montana has also, but a legal analysis of two court decisions which supposedly legalize assisted suicide in the state questions that assumption.

For all its efforts, Compassion & Choices, which was once known as the Hemlock Society, has seen more setbacks than successes. But that hasn’t stopped its latest campaign from revving up in Idaho.

It started in the local press with a column Tucker wrote in the June 25 issue of the Coeur d’Alene Press.

Tucker writes that “Idaho does not have a statute specifically addressing aid in dying, either to permit or prohibit the practice. It does not have [a statute making it] a crime of assisting another to ‘commit suicide.’ Accordingly, in Idaho, physicians can provide aid in dying.”

Margaret Dore, an attorney in Seattle who specializes in elder law, wrote a rebuttal to Tucker’s column for the Idaho Medical Association.

Dore stated that Tucker’s claim that there were no statutes dealing with assisted suicide “is untrue.”

“Idaho does have a statute prohibiting assisted suicide. Moreover, it has been in effect since 1994. Prior to that time, assisted suicide was prohibited solely by common law,” Dore emphasized.

“With assisted suicide prohibited by common law and not subsequently made legal, a doctor who causes a suicide with ‘deliberate intention’ is guilty of an unlawful killing … [and] can be statutorily charged with murder,” Dore explained.

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Selling Assisted Suicide State to State