After six and half hours of debate on the “End of Life” bill, senators voted 17-13 in favor of taking a second vote on it — a strong indicator that they will pass the legislation on Thursday. All four senators who had been on the fence in the days leading up to the debate voted to keep the legislation alive. If the bill makes it out of the Senate, it is expected to pass in the House, and Gov. Peter Shumlin strongly supports it.
The bill took a circuitous route to the Senate floor — it originated in the Health and Welfare Committee, which approved it 5-0, and then was sent to the Judiciary Committee, which voted 3-1 against it. (Sen. Jeannette White, was absent.) Ordinarily the bill would have languished here, but because of an agreement made over the summer between the Senate President Pro-Tem John Campbell and the chairs of the Judiciary and Health and Welfare Committees, it proceeded to the floor for debate despite not having the Judiciary Committee’s blessing.
The majority voted today to reject the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation that the bill be tabled. This clears the way for a second vote, to be held Wednesday, and a third vote, scheduled for Thursday. Proposed amendments to the bill can be made up until the third vote.
On the floor, the bill withstood hours of oral scrutiny and was robustly defended by Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, chair of the Health and Welfare Committee. The discussion meandered across several fields—medical, legal, philosophical. One minute, it dwelt on marginal legal nuances, and in the next it plunged into deeper emotional territory, with senators recalling the manner in which loved ones had died.
Ayer, a longtime proponent of the bill, described it as “a safe legal harbor for mentally competent terminally ill patients wanting to control the timing and the manner of their death.” She concluded her remarks by calling on the Senate to allow “those very few who choose it to write the last pages of their lives.”
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, a staunch opponent of the legislation, took the reins after Ayer, and said his committee “sees a bill with serious flaws, sees a bill with problems, and sees a bill that leaves us with a number of questions.”
“This has tremendous room for abuse, that’s my concern, that’s why I’m opposed,” Sears said.
More than a dozen other senators also had their say, and Senate President Pro-Tem John Campbell was among them, speaking out against the bill. “This is not a bill about pain and suffering. You don’t have to be in pain, you don’t have to suffer. You could have received your diagnosis, what 15 days ago… and you can take this medication and kill yourself,” Campbell said.
Leaning heavily on statistics from Oregon, which has had a very similar law on the books for 15 years, Ayer methodically addressed the torrent of concerns that came from Sears, Campbell, and other senators. These included the following:
— unpleasant side-effects of the lethal prescription
— people may be coerced into taking the lethal medicine
—a doctor’s prognosis is not infallible
— people may be more inclined to reject treatment if they have this option
— the bill does not require that the person’s primary care doctor be notified nor does it require a specialist in palliative care to be consulted
—physicians would be participating in the patient’s death
Much of the debate revolved around one question— whether or not the state should interfere in end of life decisions. Sears argued no, and invoked the late Supreme Court Justice Blackmun, who said, “Government has no business in the machinery of death.”
Sen. Richard McCormack agreed that “the state has no business here,” but he said the bill would protect individual autonomy and minimize the state’s part in the process. “The bill sets up an apparatus by which the state determines that the dying person is in his or her right mind and is making his or her own decision… the state protects the autonomy of the person making his or her decision.”
Sears and Ayer offered different explanations for why the bill, which has surfaced perennially in the State House, gained traction in the Senate this year.
Sears said lobbying by Patients Choice, a national advocacy group with a Vermont branch that promotes end of life choices, tipped the balance— “Let’s face it. This Patients Choice group did one heck of a lobbying job.”
Ayers said it was the data. “For every one of those top ten questions, we have information about how it actually happened in Oregon.” Ayer said this data, along with her professional experience as a nurse, allowed her to comfortably answer “about 85 percent of the questions.”
Several of the wavering senators, including Don Collins, D-Franklin, Peter Galbraith, D-Windham, and John Rodgers, D-Essex-Orleans, said they were ultimately swayed by conversations with their constituents.
Though the prospects of the bill look good, its passage isn’t a sure shot yet. Three senators in the undecided camp— Collins, Galbraith, and Bob Hartwell, D-Bennington — who all voted today to bring the bill to a second vote, said they won’t neccesarily vote for it.
“They’ll have to do some selling,” Hartwell said. “There are flaws in the bill that I think could probably be fixed, but whether the committee is willing to do that or not, I don’t know.”
Collins said he is “probably in the camp of lets move this to other body [the House]” but he wants to look at any amendments that crop up tomorrow before formally supporting the bill.
Galbraith said he objects to the “state-sponsored process” that the bill puts in place. Asked if he will support the bill, he responded, “All will be revealed.”
