Part of Minnesota's law against "assisting suicide" has been found unconstitutional by the Minnesota Supreme Court ("Nurse wins appeal over suicides," March 20). Freedom of speech covers discussing methods of dying.
Exploring end-of-life options is now permitted. But it is still against Minnesota law to assist someone in killing himself or herself.
Minnesota already has revised its law against assisting suicide so that doctors can help their patients die in reasonable ways such as ending medical treatment and disconnecting life-support machines. But laypersons are not empowered to help anyone make end-of-life choices.
Advances in medical technology now mean that most of us will be exercising some choices at the end of our lives. If no one says "enough," we might be in danger of being "treated to death." Maximum medical efforts will continue to be applied to our bodies until we die despite everything medical science and technology can offer.
However, medical practice now does allow reasonable choices to be made so that we are not required to die while still connected to life-support tubes and machines.
Minnesota laws regarding end-of-life care should be revised again so that helping someone to make wise end-of-life medical choices does not result in a trial for committing the crime of assisting suicide.
Perhaps the existing law should be replaced by a more detailed law against "causing premature death." Our goal should be avoid both dying too soon and dying too late.
Such a law would permit Minnesotans to make wise end-of-life decisions as long as such choices did not result in dying too soon. Taking everything into account, we should be permitted to choose the best time to die.