Updated at 9:00 a.m. on Feb. 15, 2013.
For the first time, a body of the Vermont Legislature passed a bill that allows physicians to help terminally ill patients take their own lives with lethal doses of prescription drugs.
The Vermont Senate voted 22-8 on Thursday to move the legislation to the House. The final vote came after three days of contentious debate that deeply divided senators across party lines. Republicans and Democrats voted on both sides of the issue, and Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, broke tie votes twice on amendments to the bill.
The legislation — called “Death with Dignity” by proponents and “Physician Assisted Suicide” by opponents — does two things: It provides immunity to a health care professional who prescribes a lethal dose of medication to a terminally ill patient, if the patient self-administers lethal medication and dies as a result. It also protects any person who is with the patient from “criminal or civil liability.”
S.77 is expected to get a major overhaul in the House, where a majority of representatives are said to support the original version of the legislation, which provided many more protections for terminally ill patients who wish to end their lives with a legally prescribed drug.
Attorney Genral Bill Sorrell said the bill in its present form does not include enough safeguards for Vermonters and could create legal issues for his office.
“We’re concerned about the lack of guidelines in the amendment and the fact that there are less consumer protections in it to make sure that patients who want to use the program have their faculties about them,” he said. “We think there are less protections for Vermonters in this and potential problems for us in enforcement.”
Gov. Peter Shumlin said that the amendment was “not thought out,” and was “written on the fly,” adding that it does not “put the patient protections (of the original bill) into place.”
S.77 is a much-abbreviated version of the 20-plus-page bill the Senate Health and Welfare Committee had been working on since 2003. The original bill outlined procedures and patient safety nets that were based on a law enacted in Oregon in 1998.
Democratic Sens. Peter Galbraith and Bob Hartwell replaced the longer piece of legislation with a one-page amendment. The amended bill required no such safeguards.
Many of the original supporters of the bill were firmly opposed to the rewrite. Meanwhile, those senators who first opposed the bill had an about-face. Many of these senators said the amendment was more palatable because it did not put the state between a doctor and his or her patient.
On Thursday, Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, introduced an amendment that shaved down the Galbraith and Hartwell amendment. Sen. John Rodgers, D-Essex-Orleans, introduced a separate amendment that essentially restored the original bill with some new clauses to appease the opposition.
The floor debate over the two amendments devolved into a 30-minute recess, allowing the senators to iron out the substance of the two amendments.
During that time, Sen. Anthony Pollina, P/D-Washington, panned the notion of a libertarian bill to address this issue.
“The safeguards are really important,” he said. “We talk about taking government out or keeping government in. We’re passing a law either way, so the idea that somehow government has nothing to do with this is kind of a falsehood.”
Back on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, picked apart Rodgers’ amendment. The professional attorney with a libertarian lean pointed out legal hole after legal hole. He wrapped up his arguments in favor of Cummings’ bill with a passionate speech about the encumbered process Rodgers’ amendent would create.
“What you call safeguards are in fact obstacles … You are requiring hoops that (patients) have to go through,” Benning said. “The point of those of us who have been opposed to this bill in the Rodgers amendment, and as it was presented to us in the original underlying form, is very simple: we don’t want the state to be involved in the discussion.”
All of the same senators who supported Galbraith and Hartwell’s amendment were in favor of Cummings’ proposal, and so the vote resulted in a tie. Lt. Gov. Phil Scott broke the Senate stalemate for the second time in two days and cast a vote in favor of Cummings’ amendment.
The bill then soared through the Senate with overwhelming support.
Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, who is the architect of the original bill voted for the amended version. She expects the House will create legislation that will be more similar to the original, and she hopes to sit on the conference committee that crafts the final piece of legislation.
