The House gave final approval today to a bill that makes it legal for a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients who request it. The vote was close — 81-64 — and it came after roughly 10 hours of debate.
Several amendments were recycled from the day before, http://vtdigger.org/2013/05/01/attempts-to-scuttle-death-with-dignity-fail-vt-house-passes-bill-on-second-reading/ appearing in only slightly different forms on Wednesday. But opponents also came up with more novel ways to challenge S.77 during in the 12-hour interim between floor debate Tuesday and Wednesday.
Again, all of the substantive proposals failed. The only changes made were purely technical.
Rep. Kurt Wright, R-Burlington, proposed that lawmakers shelve the debate and put the question to voters. Wright’s amendment called for a referendum on the matter, which would have appeared on the ballot in November 2014.
Wright cautioned the chamber that the bill they pass may bear very little resemblance to the legislation that comes out of conference committee — a joint group of lawmakers who will attempt to reconcile the substantial differences between the versions passed by the House and Senate.
“It faces a very uncertain future. … It’s going to boil down to one or two senators deciding this issue,” Wright said. He offered his amendment as an alternative to taking that risk.
Rep. Chris Pearson, P-Burlington, said a referendum would open the door to the influence of “big money.”
“We do not need to subject the voters to a barrage of yes and no’s, campaign ads and mailings and all the other tools of the trade,” he said.
Pearson mentioned that one of his constituents, who also happens to be single-handedly funding the conservative Super PAC Vermonters First, had called him this morning to express opposition to the bill.
Rep. Linda Waites-Simpson, D-Essex Junction, said Wright’s amendment “takes everything that we’ve done up until this point off the table.”
There were more attempts to restrict health insurance coverage and to make more specific the cause of death on the death certificate.
Opponents lamented the majority’s refusal to make any changes to the legislation. Rep. Paul Ralston, D-Middlebury, pointed out that after two days of debate, only two words had been altered.
“We have added the word ‘facility’ and we have changed the letter ‘b’ to the letter ‘c.’
Is it impossible that the rest of us had nothing to offer in this debate?” Ralston asked.
After the reserves of amendments had been exhausted, the debate evolved into emotion-laden speeches. Opponents closed with harsh words for the legislation.
Rep. Tom Koch, R-Barre, said, “I drive past a house on Prospect Street in the city of Barre and I look and I see the garage where one of my clients who had terminal cancer sat in her car with her dog in her lap and took her own life. She was alone. That was her choice. And I can only respect that. … But this bill goes much too far. This bill with its so called protections are really obstacles to people exercising this difficult right to end their own lives … all because the state wants to insert itself into a decision that should between patients and his or her physician.”
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, called it an “unprecedented breach in the balance between individual rights and the common good” and warned that bill could create unintended consequences. “We could kill someone before their time,” Donahue said.
Rep. Warren Van Wyck, R-Ferrisburgh, said, “This bill is beyond injurious. It is lethal.”
But there was also an upsurge of support for the bill during the final hours of discussion. Its backers insisted that the bill embeds rigorous safeguards in the process — among them, patients must consult two doctors and make the request several times, they cannot be mentally impaired, and they must self-administer the medication. Simply offering immunity to physicians who prescribe an amount of medicine that could cause death — an alternative proposed on the floor last night — would include none of those protections, the supporters of the underlying bill argued..
Rep. George Till, D-Jericho, the sole medical doctor in the body, said he thought the legislation accomplishes one key thing. “This bill provides more patient autonomy.”
Rep. Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, also described the bill as simply one more option for people nearing their death. “Right now, those options are really lousy,” Clarkson said.
