Vermont set to become fourth state with assisted suicide law

A contentious end-of-life bill that has been moving back and forth between two chambers of the legislature in the US state of Vermont since February, finally came to  rest yesterday when the House voted 75-65 to accept the senate's changes to the bill.

The bill would now land up with governor Peter Shumlin, who has been a supporter of the end-of-life initiative.

Opponents made one last stand last evening against Senate bill 77, which outlined a procedure for terminally ill patients to obtain a lethal dose of medication and gave prescribing physicians legal immunity if they adhered to certain standards.

There had been lengthy debates over the bill earlier much longer than the three-hour discussion that took place yesterday - and it had been the springboard for over 20 amendments, most of which failed. A few among these however, dramatically transformed the bill.

The version now agreed to by both the senate and the house had been billed as a ''compromise,'' granting civil and criminal immunity to doctors who prescribed a lethal dose of medication to a patient with a prognosis under six months to live. The bill laid out a specific procedure for the first three years that included safeguards. Starting in 2016, those safeguards would be removed and doctors could develop their own standards.

Vermont would join three other states permitting doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients with the passage of the bill similar to Oregon's 1997 law.

The vote comes as a reversal of the defeat of similar legislation in the House in 2007.

Though critics continued to oppose the bill during House debate yesterday, supporters, who knew they had the votes to pass the bill, were less inclined to join issue with the opponents.

According to representative Carolyn Branagan, Republican – Georgia, there was potential in the bill for abuse of the disabled, especially disabled elders. She said it was not medical care, it was the opposite.

Senator Richard McCormack, Democrat-Windsor, who watched the debate from the House gallery said the bill made no judgment about the value of anybody's life. It made a very positive judgment about the value of personal freedom and the right to make one's own choices, he added.

If Governor Shumlin were to sign the bill, Vermont would become the fourth state, and the first east of the Mississippi, to let doctors help patients die by writing a prescription for a lethal dose of medication.

The first-in-the nation law of the type was passed by Oregon in 1997 through referendum; Washington state followed suit in 2006; and Montana made it legal in that state by a court order.