New Mexico Doctors Can Help Terminally Ill Patients Die, Judge Rules

A New Mexico judge has ruled that terminally ill, mentally competent patients have the right to seek help from a doctor to end their lives.

Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash made the landmark decision after a two-day trial.  The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two New Mexico doctors and Aja Riggs, a cancer patient who wanted the choice to end her life if her suffering became too much to bear.

Nash was asked to consider whether doctors can write prescriptions for terminally ill patients who want to end their life. The judge said such patients have a fundamental right to seek aid in dying because the New Mexico Constitution prohibits the state from depriving a person from enjoying life and liberty or seeking and obtaining safety and happiness.

“This Court cannot envision a right more fundamental, more private or more integral to the liberty, safety and happiness of a New Mexican than the right of a competent, terminally ill patient to choose aid in dying,” the judge wrote. “If decisions made in the shadow of one’s imminent death regarding how they and their loved ones will face that death are not fundamental and at the core of these constitutional guarantees, than what decisions are?”

Nash also ruled that doctors who provide aid could not be prosecuted under the state’s assisted suicide law, which classifies helping with suicide as a fourth-degree felony. The plaintiffs in the case do not consider physicians aiding in dying a form of suicide.

The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office said it is considering the possibility of an appeal, but needs to further analyze the judge’s decision first.

If the ruling stands, it would make New Mexico the fifth state to allow doctors to prescribe fatal prescriptions to terminal patients.

Riggs was pleased with the decision:

“Most Americans want to die peacefully at home, surrounded by loved ones, not die in agony in a hospital. I feel the same way. If my cancer returns and I face intolerable suffering, I want the option to cut it short, and to die peacefully at home.”