ProLife.ie - We are an education and awareness organisation committed to the promotion of the culture of life.

The Supreme Court of the US state of Georgia has struck down a law banning people from publicly advertising to help with assisted suicide. The unanimous decision puts the elderly and people with disabilities in “grave danger,” a national pro-life leader warned. The 1994 state law did not prohibit assisted suicides, but it made it a felony for those who promote that they could assist with a suicide. In its February 6 decision, the court said the law violated free speech rights.
 
“The ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court puts the lives of older people and those with disabilities in grave danger because it opens the door for the fringe advocates of doctor-prescribed death to openly advertise the practice in the state of Georgia,” said Burke Balch, director of National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics. “This ruling essentially says if you want to advertise helping people jump off a cliff, you can hang out your shingle in Georgia,” he told National Right to Life News.
 
The Supreme Court’s 7-0 decision means that four members of the group Final Exit Network, charged in 2009 with helping a 58-year-old man with cancer to commit suicide at his home in Georgia, will not have to stand trial. In its eight-page ruling, the court pointed out that if the state had “truly been interested in the preservation of human life it could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction on protected speech whatsoever. Alternatively, the state could have sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide when accompanied by an overt act to accomplish that goal. The state here did neither.”
CNS. February 9.