N.Y.'s highest court hears case on 'aid in dying'

Albany -- Questions posed by judges on New York's highest court Tuesday in a case over whether a doctor can prescribe a lethal dose of medication to a dying patient dealt with what their decision might mean for people at the extremes of illness:

Wouldn't a decision siding with the plaintiffs — that the state constitutional rights of due process and equal protection under the law extend to the right to obtain a lethal prescription when a person is close to death — also mean that any healthy New Yorker would have a right to obtain a drug to kill himself, Judge Leslie E. Stein asked plaintiff attorney Edwin G. Schallert.

And how, Judge Jenny Rivera wanted to know from Anisha S. Dasgupta of the state attorney general's office, does the state's interest in a citizen change at the last stages of life, given that New York allows the withholding of medical treatment and the administration of palliative sedation, which may both hasten death?

The case, Myers vs. Schneiderman, was originally filed on behalf of three mentally competent, terminally ill patients who had pursued a court order protecting their doctors if they prescribed a lethal dose of medication intended to speed up their deaths, referred to as "aid in dying."

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/N-Y-s-highest-court-hears-case-on-aid-in-dying-11184104.php