NM Supreme Court: No legal ‘right to die’ for terminally-ill patients

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a 2014 district court decision that ruled terminally-ill patients in the state have a legal right to aid in dying.

The 2014 decision by 2nd Judicial Court Judge Nan Nash ruled that a 1963 state statute that made it a fourth-degree felony for a physician to help another person take their own life did not apply to physicians who give a lethal dose of medication to a terminally-ill patient.

That ruling said that aid-in-dying was a fundamental liberty and that the 1963 statute should no longer be enforced by courts.

But last August, the New Mexico Court of Appeals reversed that decision.

In Thursday’s 5-0 Supreme Court decision, Justice Edward L. Chavez wrote that there is not an absolute and fundamental right for physicians to help patients die and ruled the 1963 statute was indeed constitutional.

Justice Chavez’s ruling did not come without much opining, however, as is evidenced in the 62-page ruling.

He pointed out state laws that extend protections to physicians beyond the 1963 statute and other nearly-20-year-old decisions that protect them when they withdraw life-sustaining treatment or administer pain medication that could speed up a person’s death.

The justice argued that those extra protections in the Uniform Health-Care Decision Act and New Mexico Pain Relief Act narrow the 1963 statute in order to allow extra rights to physicians who do perform such treatments.

CASE BACKGROUND

The original case surrounded two UNM doctors who had previously worked with assisted suicide patients who were terminally ill and mentally competent and who wished to help a patient end her life.

The right to die issue began with Aja Riggs, a woman who had been battling stage 3 cancer with a prognosis that her time to live was limited, and two UNMH doctors who had been involved in the practice in other states.

“If the cancer is going to kill me I want the peace of mind of knowing I have some choice at the very end,” said Riggs at the time.

She is now in remission.

The ACLU got behind the case and argued patients like Aja should be able to die with dignity. They believe doctors should be legally allowed to assist terminally ill patients to commit suicide and that the decision should be between the doctor and patient.

“I think people ought to be able to make the choice on their own terms,” said Riggs during proceedings at a packed courthouse inJanuary 2014. “Not to have somebody do something to them when they’re in that extreme pain. That should be avoided. ”

The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office argued at the time that the question of whether right-to-die should be allowed in the state should be left up to the legislature.

JUSTICE AGREES HELP NEEDED FROM LEGISLATURE, EXECUTIVE BRANCH

Justice Chavez boiled Thursday’s ruling down to whether or not a mentally-competent and terminally-ill person can self-administer a lethal dose of medication given to them by a willing physician that would let them die peacefully.

He cautioned against agreeing with the question, saying it could open physicians to criminal liability since the 1963 statute would be unconstitutional at that point.

But he also noted the personal, physical and psychological consequences patients would suffer if he disagreed with the question at hand.

In his writing, Justice Chavez suggested the state legislature and executive branch should be the impetus for any change, noting there are no current laws that outline exactly qualifies a person as being terminally ill or anything that can determine whether or not a patient is competent to make an end-of-life decision.

“These concerns require robust debate in the legislative and the executive branches of government,” Justice Chavez wrote.

And while he sympathized with patients, saying the state has no “legitimate interest in preserving a painful and debilitating life” that will imminently end, the court needed to protect physicians in the state, as well as those who could be coerced into making a decision they might not fully understand.

The provisions in UHCDA and the Pain Relief Act add extra protections that help physicians and patients, the justice wrote, but a full declaration of the 1963 statute being unconstitutional would open up any new legislation regarding new right-to-die law to constitutional questions as well.

Physician aid-in-dying is allowed in Washington, Oregon, Vermont and California and is under dispute in Montana.

In his conclusion, Justice Chavez remanded the proceedings in the case back to the 2nd Judicial District Court to make another ruling.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico called the ruling “tragic” for patients in a statement to The Associated Press.

“From the very beginning this case has been about giving people more options and control at the end of life, and we are deeply disappointed that the courts have decided against allowing doctors to care for their patients in this way,” ACLU-NM cooperating attorney Laura Schauer Ives told the AP.

ACLU-NM spokesman Micah McCoy told the AP the group will now turn its attention to changing state law.