As published in the Senior News for August/September 2012:
I was glad to see the advertising in your publication by Montanans Against Assisted Suicide & For Living with Dignity. Assisted suicide is an important topic for Montana where proponents are wrongly claiming that the practice is legal and the majority of the population are senior citizens (over 50 years of age).
I retired from the Motion Picture Pension and Health Plans in Studio City, California, as the Chief Financial Officer. One reason that I retired to Montana was that I had the perception that it was senior citizen friendly, unlike Oregon and Washington, which have adopted laws allowing doctors and family members to assist people in killing themselves. That was repugnant to me.
The proposed legalization is for terminally-ill persons. “Terminally-ill” is a term that I am all too familiar with. In my previous employment, one would need to be terminally-ill to qualify for a pension if they had not attained a specified age. Many, many times doctors deemed someone terminally-ill and they wound up outliving their care-givers, not really but they lived many years. If these persons had instead been applying for a lethal dose and used it, they would be dead before their time.
Ted Friesen, Big Fork