Hinkle speaks at meeting

Physician-assisted suicide was the main topic of Senator Gregoray Hinkle’s talk during last Friday’s St. Regis town council meeting.

Before hitting the hot topic, Hinkle touched on upcoming issues that would be brought before the next legislative session as well as several bills that he drafted. One of the bills Hinkle is working on will put an amendment on the Montana Constitution. Article five, section nine of the Constitution reads, “No member of the legislature shall, during the term for which he shall have been elected, be appointed to any civil office under the state.” What Hinkle wants to change is to define a “civil office”.

He also touched on a bill he’s drafting that would require those seeking to ban lead ammunition to first go through the state legislature. Earlier in 2010, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks sought to ban lead shot ammunition for upland game bird hunting on a series of state-owned hunting lands. The idea, however, was shot down in February by an FWP Commission in Helena. Some of the reasons for the ban were concerns that lead from bullets were endangering animals and leading to contamination.

“But what I really want to talk about tonight, it’s creating a stir across the state, is a bill to prohibit physician assisted suicide or aid in dying,” Hinkle said.

Hinkle said the problem with allowing physician-assisted suicide, or aid-in-dying, is once a physician tells a patient about the option, the choice has been taken away.

“Once a physician tells a patient they have this option, the minute a patient is informed, a seed is planted in the patient’s mind,” Hinkle said.

Hinkle’s wife, Gayle, also spoke on the issue from the audience stating that “once you give doctors the right to legally kill someone that opens Pandora’s Box.”

The bill is in response to the decision made back at the end of 2009 in Baxter vs. Montana, which was a Montana Supreme Court case that addressed whether the state’s constitution guaranteed terminally ill patients a right to lethal prescription medication from their physicians. The ruling in 2009 said a patient’s consent to physician-assisted suicide “constitutes a statutory defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician.”

Hinkle said wrote in his column “We The People” that the act he proposed is “based on Montana’s public policy to prevent elder abuse and to value all citizens.”

Washington and Oregon are two states that allow physician-assisted suicide. Hinkle said that allowing it in Montana will lead to instances like that of which happened to Barbara Wagner.

Wagner, a resident of Oregon, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her insurance company refused to pay for a drug that could potentially prolong her life, offering to pay for aid-in-dying.

“Do you see where this can go?” Hinkle asked at the meeting Friday night. “It opens up this huge box where we don’t want to go. There’s no end to it.”

Hinkle said that allowing physician-assisted suicide will only increase elder abuse, saying that this bill would “stop the potential of that happening.”

Hinkle also argued that no doctor can accurately diagnose how long one will live. The senator talked about his friend, who at age 52, had a heart attack and was given no more than eight years to live. However, 30 years later, “he is still enjoying life.”

“Montana values all of its citizens, including those who are older or may have chronic conditions or other disabilities,” Hinkle wrote in his column. “Baxter overlooked elder abuse. It is against public policy to allow consent to homicide; to encourage Montanans to cut their lives short or steer them to suicide. Montanans should reject ‘aid in dying.’”