Dozens of Vermonters filled a corner Statehouse room on Wednesday to listen to testimony before the House Judiciary and Human Services committees on a controversial bill
The legislation — called “Death with Dignity” by proponents and “Physician Assisted Suicide” by opponents — was intended to make it easier for physicians to help terminally ill patients take their own lives with prescription drugs. And it comes from the Senate, where it was gutted on the floor. The House, however, is meeting the original 20-page version of S.77 with less hostility.
When the bill first landed in the Senate this year, it was based on an Oregon law that voters approved via referendum in 1994. While the Senate Health and Welfare Committee unanimously approved that draft, the Judiciary Committee shut it down. Lawmakers who favored that version of the bill touted its many safety nets. But those in opposition said the so-called safeguards placed the state in between a doctor and his or her patient.
The opposition won a Senate floor fight with a tie-breaking vote from Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, replacing the procedure-heavy language with a one-page bill that does two things: It provides immunity to a health care professional who prescribes a medication to a terminally ill patient, in the event the patient self-administers more than the prescribed dose of that medication and dies as a result. Some critics of this version of the bill argue that this provision establishes nothing new. The bill also protects any person who is with the patient from “criminal or civil liability.”
Attorney General Bill Sorrell, who supported the initial legislation, is not impressed.
“It’s far from the best piece of legislation to ever come out of the Senate, and I think it needs dramatic change,” he said. “No matter how you feel about the ‘physician-assisted suicide’ or ‘death with dignity’ debate, I don’t think that S.77 as it passed the Senate fosters your interests … S.77, as enacted, doesn’t even require the patient to tell the physician that he or she wants to die early.”
Fortunately for Sorrell, the two chairs — both Democrats — of the House committees that will shape the bill share his general opinion. South Burlington Rep. Ann Pugh, who chairs Human Services, and Hinesburg Rep. Bill Lippert, who chairs Judiciary, have both voted for similar bills in the past.
Pugh’s committee will take testimony this week and next, and the committee is slated to take a position on the bill next week. If the bill passes out of Pugh’s committee, which House leaders expect it to, it will come to the floor and then move to Lippert’s crew for legal tweaking.
“I’d like to see a bill that provides more patient safeguards, but I respect the committee process and we will take up the bill that passes out of the Human Services Committee,” Lippert said.
Pugh takes a similar stance.
“I have supported giving Vermonters this additional choice at end of life in a way that provides safeguards and that is open and transparent,” Pugh said.
In other words, she supports a bill that is more in line with the Oregon law.
But that doesn’t mean this legislation will necessarily sail smoothly through the House. Powerful interests are staunchly opposed to the notion; not least of which belong to the physicians’ association.
“The Vermont Medical Society continues to believe there should be no new laws on physician assisted suicide,” said Paul Harrington, the association’s director. “While the medical society appreciates the Senate’s effort to improve the bill, we still believe there should be no such law.”
Clarification: The version of the bill that passed the Senate does not provide immunity to a doctor who prescribes a lethal dose of medication. It provides immunity to a doctor for prescribing a medication for a terminally ill patient’s symptoms, in the event that the doctor’s patient self-administers more than the prescribed dose and dies as a result.
Updated at 9:26 a.m. on April 11, 2013.
