New Mexico could be fifth state to legalize physician-assisted suicide

[Judi Lynn]

Source: UPI

New Mexico could be fifth state to legalize physician-assisted suicide
By Andrew V. Pestano | Jan. 27, 2015 at 1:30 PM

ALBUQUERQUE, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Judges of the New Mexico Court of Appeals will determine whether doctors can help terminally ill patients end their lives.
New Mexico would join Montana, Oregon, Vermont and Washington as states that allow physician-assisted suicide because of terminal illness.

Aja Riggs' case was presented to the court on Monday. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2011, which is in remission. If the cancer comes back, she wants to be able to end her life.

"To require somebody in that case to suffer and withhold that option we know is safe and is compassionate and legal in other places, is just not right," Riggs said.



Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/01/27/New-Mexico-could-be-fifth-state-to-legalize-physician-assisted-suicide/6801422377996/#ixzz3Q3F5HZ64

[lovemydog]

1. Very interesting.

Thanks Judi Lynn.

Please update if you hear any more news on this case.

[HockeyMom]

2. Are we ready to declare adults insane for refusing treatment

if medicine determines that they can be saved for 6 weeks, 6 months, or 6 years? That goes against everything a free society is for. Assisted suicide? Ok, maybe doctors don't want to do that, but an adult can refuse treatment, get a gun, and put it to their heads to end it all. I really, really don't like where the country is going with this. It is in the public interest to keep everyone alive as long as possible, even if it is against their own wishes.

[SpankMe]

3. Keep everyone alive...even if it's against their own wishes?

Now THAT's the ultimate in government control over our minds and bodies. I wouldn't like where our country is going if THAT came to pass!

Suicide by gunshot? Violence, blood and tissue spattering vs. a quiet dignified passing under the supervision of a professional? I'll take the professional, thanks.

Banning assisted suicide and forcing patients to use a gun on themselves or something else violent, sudden and possibly prone to error is like banning abortion and forcing people to use coat hangers and vacuum cleaners to terminate their pregnancies.

[Demit]

4. Keep people alive as long as possible so you can inflict as much pain on them as possible

That's what your preferred society sounds like.

[uppityperson]

5. wtf? How is it in the public's interest to keep everyone alive as long as possible, against their ow

wishes?

Telling someone they can always shoot themselves is awful. That way leads to police involvement, a very messy mess, potential for pain and suffering. Assisted suicide has specific guidelines, is not awful for survivors or painful for the dying.

What public interest is best kept by forcing people to live their last bit in pain if they do not want to?

[Dont call me Shirley]

7. Do you know what it is like to ache in writing pain so badly that you can't imagine going on to the

next moment of life? Do you know what it is like experiencing this for a year or years? Do you know what it is like when you are in long term chronic debilitating wasting away pain and sickness that can not be relieved or fixed with any medication or therapy? If not then, please go speak to people in this state of being before you condemn them to longer suffering.

[HockeyMom]

8. I am not condeming them at all

I am saying it should be their choice and not medicine's.

[Dont call me Shirley]

9. Absolutely!! It need always be our own personal choice.

[ancianita]

6. Thanks. This also sheds some light on how doctors tend to see their own deaths. I gather that, other

states' doctors tend to be allies of patients who want physician-assisted suicide, even if the court system just makes it hard for the medical system to just give patients what they want.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203918304577243321242833962

[Judi Lynn]

10. New Mexico Appeals Court Hears Assisted Suicide Case

New Mexico Appeals Court Hears Assisted Suicide Case
SANTA FE, N.M. — Jan 26, 2015, 6:56 PM ET
By RUSSELL CONTRERAS Associated Press

Do terminally ill patients in New Mexico already have the right to end their lives?

That's what the New Mexico Court of Appeals is set to decide after hearing arguments Monday from the state and lawyers for a terminally ill woman.

The Santa Fe woman, who has advanced uterine cancer, is asking the courts to clarify New Mexico's laws putting doctors in legal trouble and preventing her from ending her life.

Last year, Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash ruled the New Mexico Constitution prohibits the state from depriving a person of life, liberty or property without due process.

In addition, Nash found doctors could not be prosecuted under the state's assisted suicide law, which classifies helping with suicide as a fourth-degree felony.

Two doctors and Aja Riggs, the Santa Fe woman, asked the judge to determine that physicians would not be breaking the law if they wrote prescriptions for competent, terminally ill patients who wanted to end their lives.

Riggs and doctors Katherine Morris and Aroop Mangalik filed their lawsuit in 2012.

The New Mexico Attorney General's Office appealed Nash's ruling.

Scott Fuqua, director of the office's litigation division, told the court the state had no reason to keep terminally ill patients alive, but the law didn't allow doctors to prescribe medications to end patients' lives.

Fuqua also said denying patients the right to end their lives was about preventing abuse.

ACLU lawyer Laura Schauer Ives said, however, what state lawyers were suggesting was that patients store up medication and kill themselves behind closed doors. "It's cruel to say that patients have a right to end their lives but not give them the means to do it," Ives said.

The appeals court could take around six months to make a decision, lawyers said.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/mexico-appeals-court-hears-assisted-suicide-case-28499943

[Judi Lynn]

11. Judges mull 'Aid in Dying' case

Judges mull 'Aid in Dying' case
UPDATED 10:23 AM MST Jan 26, 2015
By Laura Thoren

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —A nurse who nearly went to jail for helping her dying father is fighting for states like New Mexico to make it legal for a medical professional help patients end their lives.

Barbara Mancini said her father was the definition of independent and hands on. So when he became terminally ill, Mancini, a former emergency room nurse, said her dad wanted to die on his own terms at his Pennsylvania home.

“My father was in home hospice care because he was terminally ill, and having significant pain,” Mancini said.

But Mancini said hospice nurses were not giving her dad the necessary drugs to numb that pain. One day after her dad asked for his morphine, she handed him the bottle and he took it.

When a hospice nurse and supervisor showed up to the house, they called 911.

“I was arrested then and there in the house and charged with aiding an attempted suicide,” Mancini said.

More:
http://www.koat.com/news/judges-mull-aid-in-dying-case/30923626