To The Editor:
On March 11, I visited our State House and watched the Vermont Senate approve a bill that continues the two-year-old assisted suicide law. This bill, H.209, is now before the Vermont House. We often console ourselves about bad laws by saying, "After all, it's not a matter of life and death." But this bill really is a matter of life and death. It increases the likelihood that disempowered people may be killed against their will.
One assumption by a pro-assisted suicide senator struck me as particularly irresponsible. When it was suggested to wait a year to see whether the law passed two years ago had, in fact, left terminally ill people terribly exposed to the real world of inadequate health care access, disability, financial insecurity and exhausted caregivers, I heard this senator reply that because so little data has been collected, the state is unlikely to learn more in a year's time.
Everyone agrees this law is a matter of life and death. Everyone agrees Vermont hasn't collected hard data on the real world impact of the law: who has taken the lethal drugs, and why, and whether it was administered "correctly." And at least one senator in the majority apparently has a crystal ball saying nothing relevant is likely to turn up.
It's as if some of our senators don't want to hear about the cracks in the system. I hope the House will care more about the real welfare of at-risk Vermonters.
Dr. Felix Callan
Waterbury Center
