ACTION ALERT

We just got this email from VT Right to Life. Looks like the VT Senate is going to take up a bill (S.74) lifting virtually all restrictions on physician assisted suicide, restrictions that were much touted as safety guarantees when physician assisted suicide was legalized in 2013. It is ironic that the legislature, meeting and voting via Zoom, may pass a bill that allows a doctor to prescribe an overdose of drugs intended to allow a sick person to commit suicide after meeting with that person only via Zoom. No physical examination will be required. No waiting period will be required. Please contact your senators and representatives asking them to vote NO on this bill and to oppose its ever getting out of committee. This isn’t inevitable. While a similar bill was passed in California, dedicated citizens were able to stop one in Washington.
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Action Alert: CALL YOUR SENATORS
S.74
Senate Health and Welfare is Minimizing Requirements for Assisted Suicide

We just got this email from VT Right to Life. Looks like the VT Senate is going to take up a bill (S.74) lifting virtually all restrictions on physician assisted suicide, restrictions that were much touted as safety guarantees when physician assisted suicide was legalized in 2013. It is ironic that the legislature, meeting and voting via Zoom, may pass a bill that allows a doctor to prescribe an overdose of drugs intended to allow a sick person to commit suicide after meeting with that person only via Zoom. No physical examination will be required. No waiting period will be required. Please contact your senators and representatives asking them to vote NO on this bill and to oppose its ever getting out of committee. This isn’t inevitable. While a similar bill was passed in California, dedicated citizens were able to stop one in Washington.
———————————————————
Action Alert: CALL YOUR SENATORS
S.74
Senate Health and Welfare is
Minimizing Requirements
for Assisted Suicide

On January 6th, just two days into the 2022 Legislative Session, after voting to work remotely again for at least the first two weeks, your Vermont Senate Health and Welfare took up the issue of lessening restrictions for assisted suicide.
S.74 is a bill that was introduced by Senators McCormack, Clarkson, Lyons, and Sirotkin in 2021. It’s sole purpose is to lessen restrictions on Act 39, Vermont’s assisted suicide bill that was put into law in 2013. These restrictions would be weakened in the following manner:
1. It would eliminate the need for a patient to be in the physical presence of a doctor when both oral requests are made requesting medication to be “self-administered to hasten the patient’s death.” Committee discussions are currently around the issue of requiring audio only (by phone) or audio/video requests.
2. It would eliminate a requirement that “the prescribing physician have conducted a physical examination of the patient in order to determine that the patient was suffering a terminal condition.”
3. It would eliminate a requirement that “the physician must have waited at least 48 hours after the occurrence of the required events before writing the prescription” for this self-administered medication that would hasten the patient’s death.
4. This bill would also “provide immunity for any person who acts in good faith compliance with the provisions of Vermont’s patient choice at end of life laws.”
While it is challenging to think that any legislation can be done effectively through Zoom, without sufficient accessibility from Vermont residents and/or lobbyists, it is even more challenging to imagine that Senate Health and Welfare considers the era of COVID an appropriate time to lessen restrictions on assisted suicide that were put in place to protect the most vulnerable sick and elderly in our population.
Vermont Right to Life’s Executive Director, Mary Hahn Beerworth, will be testifying in opposition to S.74 on Wednesday, January 12th at 9AM. If you would like to listen to her testimony, click here for Livestream access.
VRLC strong opposes this action.
We urge you to please contact your Senators
and House Representatives
and tell them to
VOTE NO on S.74.