A Vermont Senate committee heard limited testimony Wednesday on the state’s aid-in-dying law, and its members plan to stand clear of extensive changes to the controversial 2013 measure.
“We’re just not going to open up the bill to amendments,” said Sen. Claire Ayer (D-Addison), chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, after the hearing. She seeks to limit the scope of any changes to a law that some would like to repeal.
Those with concerns about the law said it was clear that Ayer’s committee was interested in hearing only what members wanted to hear. “The purpose of today’s hearing was to reassure them that everything was going fine and to not ask the hard questions about what they don’t know,” said Lynne Cleveland Vitzthum, an opponent who represents the Vermont Center for Independent Living, a disabilities advocacy group.
The five committee members asked few questions of the dozen witnesses. Noticeably absent were questions about the law’s impact on doctors, hospice nurses, pharmacists and others who are involved.
The law, passed by a narrow margin after months of wrangling, allows terminally ill patients to seek a prescription for a lethal dose of medication to hasten their own deaths. Doctors have reported writing six prescriptions since the law was enacted in May 2013, Health Commissioner Harry Chen said. Advocates say three people ended up using the prescriptions to end their lives.
If lawmakers take no action, several of the law’s safeguards are set to expire in 2016. Those include provisions that supporters of the law want kept, such as requirements that patients make multiple requests for the drugs, that they have a 15-day waiting period and that they get a second medical opinion.
Without those safeguards, many doctors would be unwilling to participate, said Dr. Diana Barnard, medical director of the palliative care program at the University of Vermont Medical Center. She supports the law.
Ayer made it clear she’s interested only in tweaking the law to ensure that those requirements remain. As Vitzthum tried to urge the committee to consider the dangers the law poses to those with severe disabilities, Ayer shut her off. “We had this testimony last year,” Ayer interrupted. She later apologized to Vitzthum and allowed her to continue speaking. Vitzthum, a former legislator, said she’d never seen lawmakers treat witnesses so rudely.
During testimony, Ayer rarely interrupted supporters but frequently reminded opponents that the committee had no plans to revisit the merits of the law.
Katy Lesser, whose sister Maggie Lake used the law to hasten her death last month, and Oliver Brody, Lake’s partner, both addressed the committee. Seven Days last month chronicled Lake’s story.
“The bill worked for us, for Maggie, for my family,” Lesser said. She encouraged the committee to continue the existing safeguards, including the 15-day waiting period.
“I think the safeguards gave her and her family lots of time to consider her illness, her prognosis,” Lesser said.
Others urged the committee to add provisions to the law, but Ayer said after the hearing she has no plans to do that.
Few pharmacists have been willing to fill prescriptions, out of concern they could be held liable if something goes awry. Attorney General Bill Sorrell advised legislators in a letter that while he believes pharmacists are immune from prosecution, the law should be changed to make that clear.
Dr. Philip Brown, medical director at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, told the committee that the state lacks sufficient information about those who use the law. “We don’t have any data about whether it’s working or not,” Brown said. Oregon, the first state to pass such a law, requires physicians and families to report detailed information about what type of patients use the law, whether they end up taking the drugs and how long it takes them to die after ingestion. “That’s critical data,” Brown said. “Somebody needs to look at that data.”
Because of a last-minute legislative compromise in which two senators insisted on limiting the state’s involvement, Vermont’s law includes only a requirement that doctors tell the state when they write a prescription.
Ayer said afterward that Vermont’s small population and the low number of patients using the law would make that data statistically unsound.
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Why is the committee refusing to consider amendments?
Why would it refuse to follow Oregon in requiring reporting on what happens after a lethal prescription is written? Vermonters should know whether the prescription was filled, whether the drugs were taken, what happened to them if they were not, how long it took for death to come after ingestion, and whether there were any complications.
Senate members who favor regulations enough to revisit the law should not object to adding more safeguards.
I would suggest a requirement for continuing competency evaluations during the period between the time a person gets the prescription and the time of death. Physical or mental deterioration caused by illness could well make someone competent to request the prescription incompetent to take the drugs six months later. Will he still be able to self administer? Will he know what he is doing?
Another safeguard would be requiring disinterested witnesses at the time of ingestion. Under the current law, we cannot know whether a person took the drugs freely, was pressured or coerced, given them without his knowledge, or was forced to take them. This law enables abuse of elderly and disabled people.
The committee should set up a process to track general suicide rates and compare them with trends in assisted suicide.
Finally, it needs to prohibit families and the media from reporting assisted suicides in a romanticized way that the Vermont Suicide Prevention Platform says contributes to suicide contagion. Keep the reports factual and anonymous. We owe this to our children.
One wonders what motive the committee members have for refusing to entertain amendments that might make a bad law better.
Is this refusal a tacit acknowledgement that the subtlety of the pressures contributing to suicide makes it impossible to write a “safe” assisted suicide law?
I used my 300 word allowance in the comment above, so I have to comment again to congratulate Terri Hallenbeck on an excellent, well-written, and, most importantly, balanced report. Thank you!
I fail to understand the demand to know the details of what happens to each patient, right down to how long it takes them to die. Do we require that of each chemo treatment, radiation treatment, or other various life-prolonging methods that in many cases prolongs pain and suffering while offering very little quality of life?
We had 6 prescriptions written and only 3 were used. I would be more worried about people being pressured not to use the drugs, rather than pressured to use them. Seriously, only 3 people died by their choice, that should be considered a success, not a failure.
I wonder if this end-of-life debate was ever really necessary in the past like it is now, since we’ve never been able to prolong pain and suffering the way we can now. Far be it from me to judge what someone else decides they can no longer endure, and shame on me for insisting they keep on going when they are only prolonging the inevitable at obvious cost to themselves.
I attended yesterday’s hearing, and Sen. Ayer said amendments won’t be considered because there are so many things that need to be fixed in the law that it would take weeks and there isn’t time. Sen. Ayer seems to forget that, in 2013, she, along with House Speaker Shap Smith, was responsible for cobbling together this law on the fly. Sen. Ayer willingly jettisoned more than 2 dozen provisions that she had previously argued on the Senate floor were vital safeguards, in order to appease two Senators and get their votes to pass something – anything – into law to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide. Some parts of the law are scheduled to sunset because Sen. Ayer allowed the sunset provision to be put into the law in the first place! And now, with a straight face, she holds this hearing, all concerned about it?
I am never comfortable when debate is limited on legislation. It feels like an abuse of power. If changes are going to be made to the bill than both sides need to be heard from. Fairly.