By Michael Bielawski
Vermont’s end-of-life assisted suicide policy will allow citizens from neighboring states with more prohibitive policies to travel to the Green Mountain State to legally end their lives with lethal drugs.
A new report on the state’s assisted suicide policy was submitted by Mark Levine, M.D., Commissioner, Vermont Department of Health to the State Legislature. The law legalizing assisted suicide was passed in 2013. In May of 2023 lawmakers modified the law so that now out-of-state residents will be permitted to engage in assisted suicide in Vermont.
The rate of assisted suicide appears to have increased in recent years. Of the 203 ‘reported events’ (lethal dose prescriptions), 85 have taken place since July 1, 2021. During that time, 84 death certificates of people filling the prescriptions have been reported. 72 died by what the Health Department calls “Patient Choice.”
The initial policy was passed in 2013, Levine’s report states, “the General Assembly passed Act 39 that allowed Vermont physicians to prescribe medication to individuals with a terminal condition with the intent that the medication be self administered for the purpose of hastening the patient’s death.”
Components include that there must be an oral or written request by the patient to the physician, all steps should be voluntary, the patient must be determined capable of making such a decision, and the diagnosis at hand must be confirmed by a second doctor and a non-interested witness.
Stats from the report breakdown the reasons why people engaged in assisted suicide. Most of the cases were cancer at 73% followed by neurodegenerative conditions at 8% and end of stage lung disease at 5%.
Some reasons are more vague. These include 5% where “multiple conditions”, 5% were “other events” and 1% was “unknown diagnosis or cause”.
Vermont a destination for assisted suicide?
Mary Beerworth, the Executive Director of Vermont Right to Life, has issued a statement on the policy. She commented on how this will make Vermont destination for assisted suicide.
“Vermont lawmakers have opened our state up to anyone from any state in the US, or anywhere in the world, to come here to obtain the lethal drugs,” she wrote.
She noted that at least one neighboring state has resisted this policy.
“The legislative body in Lynda Bluestein’s home state of CT has repeatedly declined to legalize physician-assisted suicide for the very same reasons that the Vermont Legislature declined to pass such a law for over a decade,” she wrote.
She noted that disabled folks in particular could be put at risk.
“The effort against such a law in CT is led by the disability community as they rightly fear that such laws will negatively impact their community. Also, as predicted by opponents here in Vermont, there has been a rise in suicide among the general population as committing suicide becomes more and more acceptable.”
She suggests that Vermont policies are undermining neighboring states.
“The Vermont Legislature, by offering out-of-state patients access to a lethal dose, has undermined the laws in neighboring states. This appears to be a new trend. For example, New Hampshire has enacted a law that parents of a minor daughter must be notified before having an abortion. Now, minor’s merely need to cross the border between the two states to evade NH’s duly passed law,” she wrote.
She added, “New Hampshire does not allow anyone to assist in another person’s death but now a NH resident need only cross the border to Vermont. … As also predicted by opponents of such laws, Vermont will soon become a suicide tourist destination.”
Vermont is one of ten states that offer assisted suicide, and they were the first to take away the residency requirement.
The development has caught the attention of social media pundits. @ClassicFilm3 wrote on X in July, “Vermont & Oregon now allow out-of-state individuals to receive lethal prescription drugs to kill themselves, Hawaii & Washington state no longer require the drugs be prescribed by doctors.”
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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