Members of the Vermont Right to Life group, which in the past has opposed abortion access and other measures, testified against H.190 when it was in the House human services committee.
By Aubrey Weaver | Community News Service
A bill that would remove the residency requirement in Vermont’s law allowing terminally ill patients to receive medication with which to end their own life has passed the Legislature and awaits the governor’s approval.
“There’s no other kind of medical care in Vermont in which your residency is required,” said David Englander, senior policy and legal advisor for the Vermont Department of Health. “There shouldn’t be anything unique about this care. It’s simply the last decision made between a patient and a doctor through the lifetime of the patient.”
The change comes following a lawsuit against the state last August after a Connecticut cancer patient was denied medical aid in dying because she was not a Vermont resident. In March, Vermont waived the residency requirement for her as part of a settlement of that lawsuit, in which the patient argued the restriction was unconstitutional.
Because the lawsuit was settled, that constitutionality question remains unanswered. But if signed into law, H.190 would make it a moot point — and allow the state to sidestep a dicey situation.
“I think there are arguments for and against constitutionality, but I would not say it is per se unconstitutional,” said legislative counsel Jennifer Carbee to the Senate health committee this month. “If you don’t make this change, there is the potential for additional litigation and potentially a court decision.”
Now the Legislature seeks to expand the right to all patients who come to Vermont for lethal medication. In H.190, the only step in the process that changes is the residency requirement for patients. Other requirements still include the patient being at least 18 years old, suffering from a terminal condition based on physician examination and being capable of making a voluntary and informed decision to hasten their own death.
If passed, the policy will take effect immediately.
The simple nature of the bill hasn’t kept critics at bay. Members of the Vermont Right to Life group, which in the past has opposed abortion access and other measures, testified against the bill when it was in the House human services committee. The group opposes the idea of medically assisted suicide to begin with and has further concerns about extending the right to non-residents.
“I spoke with a retired funeral director about H.190, and he raised his concern that patients who come to Vermont and do ingest the lethal dose can simply leave their remains for the State of Vermont to dispose of properly,” wrote Mary Hahn Beerworth, the executive director of the group, in her testimony. “This funeral home director has had to deal with abandoned bodies in the past and outlined the search for relatives and the costs that were absorbed by the state.”
Englander said an increase in remains under state care “is not something we are expecting.”
“I think there’s a host of reasons why it’s unlikely for there to be a significant increase,” said Englander, citing the choice providers have to decline providing lethal medications to patients.
To Englander, “it should be both sort of normal and profound because we’re dealing with death, but it’s also just a medical decision.”
The Community News Service is part of the Reporting and Documentary Storytelling Program at the University of Vermont.
‘Medical Aid’???? …to protect doctors when they kill people from out of state. Now that’s a paradox.
Is there an appropriation for the tourism bureau to advertise our death cult industry? “Vermont, a great place to die!” “Vermont, make us your final desitination!” “Vermont, make our Green Mountain fresh air the last breath you take!” “Vermont suicide, not with your own gun, just drop off and we’ll take care of the rest” Being that human sacrificing, sterilization, and descrating human bodies is a priority here, they need to glamorize and sanitize their ritualistic demonic industry. How will they attract the right consumers who favor perversion, self-mutilation, and death?
Once our masters determine what the state fee and tax will be for this service, they will be ready to tax us in order to subsidize it. The more people that the state can get rid of, the less CO2 and the sooner Vermont saves the planet!!! The future looks expensive and depressing for traditional Vermonters who are not very wealthy. Are the super majority’s proposed legislations part of the marketing for the suicide business?
Vermont bring ’em in to kill them off, matters not if not yet born or old and useless we’ll kill them all. What a new slogan for sodom and gomorrah on the east coast.
But I guess they have to make money some other way with everyone fleeing the cost of leftist commie government.
Anyone who has enough money to travel to Vermont to have all of their medical-aid-in-dying services performed including their end-of-life ingestion of the lethal prescription, either lives in a nearby state or can easily afford the travel and lodging expenses. It is really silly to consider that in either case they might, “leave their remains for the State of Vermont to dispose of properly,” as Ms. Beerworth stated.
Having the right to end your life when suffering from a painful and agonizing terminal illness should be a civil right and a freedom of choice that everyone is entitled to.
You might want to investigate what is going on in Canada, because we aren’t in Kansas anymore. They are suggesting physician suicides for all sorts of things now, have t bento get rid of these useless eaters you know.
If you think mankind is inherently good, or God, then hey, we’ve got some Marxist ideology you might want to invest in too!
It will be a cost benefit equation. Hell, we can get rid of lots of people just like NY did with Covid, put granny in a cOvid infested nursing home , what could possibly go wrong, then don’t give her any medicine that is proven cheap and effective, put her on a ventilator, collect $10,000 and ship her to the morgue two weeks later!
Please don’t believe all you are told by Montpelier.
Oh, why are they taking away guns because of suicide then? Is it because they can’t make money off it? Let me just say many who are contemplating suicide, what do you think they are thinking? Who’s talking to them in their heads? I can tell you who it’s not.
Hey, just showing the Mob a new business opportunity, what could possibly go wrong? Meanwhile they want to take your guns away because people are ending their lives. See they are only worried about the money, they can’t make any money off you if you do it yourself. That is how shallow and callous our government is. And notice this, along with porn and prostitution are the only things they want to deregulate and make more free.
Vermonters, here’s your sign, you can tell Montpelier by it’s fruit.
Montpelier is only about power and money.