New Video Surfaces Showing Sonia Sotomayor Discussing Assisted Suicide Issues
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 10, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new video has surfaced showing Supreme Court candidate Sonia Sotomayor participating in a September 2000 panel discussion of end-of-life issues. As has been the case with abortion, the video doesn’t appear to allow an easy discernment of where she stands on assisted suicide or euthanasia.
CBN News White House correspondent David Brody has obtained the video footage, which comes from a Federal Bar Council Inns of Court panel discussion with what appear to be other judges and attorneys.
The clips show Sotomayor and the others discussing patient rights and a hypothetical case of a patient who is near dear and the kinds of decisions that can be made.
Sotomayor says patients may make their own medical decisions but appears to believe that physicians can hold significant sway with their influence.
"Ultimately the law says the choice is the patient’s. My own feeling the reality is it’s what the doctor’s pitch is," she says.
Concerning assisted suicide itself, Sotomayor, as a federal judge at this point in time, appears to believe that doctors have to watch themselves in terms of their treatment decisions and prohibitions on assisted suicide.
"It is a clearly fine line. It is illegal in New York to assist suicide. The Supreme Court has said that law is enforceable and so the issue of how fine you want to walk the line depends both on your conscience as a doctor and your desire as to how much risk you want to take," she says in the video.
Brody says the video is part of the information that the White House submitted to the Senate on Sotomayor’s behalf in response to the very detailed questionnaire the Senate Judiciary Committee routinely requires Supreme Court nominees to answer.
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