© Desdemona Burgin/Compassion & Choices
“I don't think anyone should be required to suffer at the end of their lives,” said Aja Riggs, a cancer survivor and one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that challenged a New Mexico law prohibiting assisted suicide.
Aja Riggs, 50, thought a lot about dying after she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
She endured surgery in October 2011, then underwent aggressive chemotherapy that made her feel as if her skin was burning. She was constantly tired. Then doctors found a second tumor, which they treated with two different types of radiation.
"It was a pretty darn rough winter, actually," said Riggs of Santa Fe, N.M. "I thought to myself, I don't know if I want to go all the way to the end with a death from cancer." She considered "what I needed to do if I would like to perhaps have a more peaceful and gentle death."
Now, a New Mexico judge has ruled that terminally ill patients like Riggs have the right to "aid in dying" under the state constitution. "Such deaths are not considered 'suicide' under New Mexico's assisted suicide statute," ruled Judge Nan G. Nash of the 2nd District Court in Albuquerque last week.
The state's assisted suicide law classifies helping with suicide as a fourth-degree felony.
Aid in dying refers to doctors prescribing a fatal dose of drugs so patients can "achieve a peaceful death and thereby avoid further suffering," Nash wrote.
Comment: The federal government has estimated that at least 100,000 minors every year are sold for sex in the U.S. The men who purchase and pimp them are rarely punished. Instead, the most common reaction is to punish these victims. For more information see:
Give restitution to victims of child pornography, but also recognize all child victims of sexual exploitation