It was an emotional Tuesday morning as a state committee heard more than an hour of testimony from doctors and surviving family members on a bill that would criminalize physician-assisted suicide, or aid in dying, as homicide.

The sponsor of House Bill 328, Rep. Brad Tschida, R-Missoula, began by referring to the Montana Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling in Baxter v. Montana.

The high court found that a patient’s consent in a physician-assisted suicide is an allowable defense against a physician charged with homicide under Montana law, but did not rule either way on the procedure’s legality.

The court also left the door open for legislation by pointing out there was no precedent or statute outlawing assisted suicide, while noting the right to seek such a death is not a constitutional right.

Tschida’s bill would specifically disallow such a defense in court and end speculation over the legality of assisted suicide.

Greg Trude, the state director for Right to Life Montana, supported the bill and spoke about potential unintended consequences of allowing the procedure.

“Physician-assisted suicide is not a slippery slope, if it does happen it’s an abyss. It’s a huge hole if hospitals determine they don’t want patients to live because they can’t pay their bills,” Trude said.

Mark Connell, a Missoula attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the 2009 Baxter decision, disagreed.

“In this state … we have as a basis for much of our political dialogue the philosophy of strong individualism we pride ourselves on, of self-reliance of personal responsibility and autonomy,” Connell said. “It should not be others that make the decision for you. That’s the key to understanding the Baxter decision.”

Bobbi Hafer’s voice wavered as she recounted the decision made by her sister to take her mother off dialysis, urging the members of the committee to consider how allowing assisted suicide can tear apart families.

“She was weak, she was vulnerable … I will never forget the look of horror on my mother’s face when she was told she didn’t have to do dialysis anymore,” Hafer said. “She knew full well what that meant, and I was powerless to change my sister’s mind.”

Several physicians, including Thomas Warr of Great Falls, testified in favor of the proposed law.

“Currently as a physician, and physicians that I’ve talked to, the current legal status of this whole field is quite ambiguous,” Warr said, holding that assisted suicide “stifles active effort at relieving suffering. It’s potentially hazardous to survivors of those who commit suicide.”

“Even the [American Medical Association] in their position statement for physicians note it is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer,” said Chris Gilbert, a family doctor from Missoula. “This grants rights to the physicians that are too powerful, making him judge, jury and executioner.”

Eric Kress, a family physician based in Missoula, disagreed with the proponents’ testimony, as well as their choice of words.

“People often live beyond the end of life to what I call ‘the bitter end of life.’ This is where pain and suffering is intensified and lengthened to levels never seen in the history of mankind,” he said. “As long as I live, I will never miss the opportunity to correct people that this is not ‘assisted suicide.’ This is aiding a person with a terminal illness who wants patient-directed medical care.”

Ethel Byrnes, a widower from Missoula, spoke of her late husband’s battle with three bouts of lymphatic cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments that led him to seek aid in dying.

“Irwin was never a complainer. He always dealt with what life threw at him,” Byrnes said. But after he broke his arm he needed to be lifted into bed, required a feeding tube and daily regimen of medication and was in too much pain and discomfort to sleep at night.

“We had always talked so openly with our six children about end-of-life issues, and they accepted his decision. … Once the decision was made, Irwin’s spirits lifted. He was in control again.”

Closing out the discussion, Tschida objected to the argument that his bill would infringe on a suffering person’s rights.

“There is no decrease in autonomy in this bill, it simply closes a loophole that was written in [the Baxter decision],” he said. “What we’re talking about is the disallowance of a doctor being allowed in that process. It is not about choice. I have the right, if I want to, to end my life.”

No executive action was made or scheduled for the bill.

A separate measure on the other side of the Legislature took a different approach.

Senate Bill 202, introduced by Democratic Sen. Dick Barrett of Missoula, would create a law giving terminally ill patients the right to request medication to end their life and prohibit the prosecution of doctors who prescribe the medication. He said the bill would give guidelines for physicians who want to do that, a move that could make people feel more comfortable about that practice.

This is the third time Barrett has introduced legislation to delineate parameters for aid in helping a person to die.

Supporters of Barrett’s bill said allowing a doctor to prescribe life-ending medication allows for a more dignified death and gives control to the person suffering.

Kress said he’s been involved in about 10 of these cases and said he’s done 50 hours of study and research into how to administer prescriptions to mentally competent, terminally ill patients who ask him for help.

“Other doctors who haven’t done this need a framework,” he said. “If they tweak this law,” he said referring to House Bill 328, “I will be the one who will go to jail.”

The lack of regulations and reporting requirements under the Supreme Court’s ruling in Montana makes it impossible to know how many people have died after administering medication prescribed by a physician.   

Four other states allow patients to seek aid in dying: Oregon, Washington, Vermont and New Mexico.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.