Vermont will be known as a “death state” if legislation allowing physician-assisted suicide becomes law, a Catholic priest said before the packed state House of Representatives’ chambers.In Feb. 27 remarks before the Vermont Senate’s Committee on Health and Welfare, Father Jay C. Haskin, pastor of Our Lady of Grace Church in Colchester, Vt., warned that legalizing the act of the terminally ill to request drugs from physicians to end life “has no safeguards as death is the intended and direct result.”
The Vermont Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act (H. 44) was approved by the House Human Services Committee at the state capital here on March 2.
If signed into law, the bill would make Vermont the second U.S. state to allow a terminally ill person who has a prognosis from two doctors of six months of less to live to ask for a prescription to end one’s life.
The state of Oregon has had a law in place for nine years, with a reported 246 people who have died with a lethal prescription over the first eight years.
The bill requires that patients seeking a lethal dosage would have to undergo counseling before it is given and would have to administer the drug themselves.
Father Haskin, as one of 70 who spoke at the public hearing, pointed to his 40 years of pastoral service assisting “numerous people in the preparation for their death.”
“This is an important time to achieve wholeness, peace within and peace with loved ones,” he said. “So much good can be accomplished during these days.”
He added that for terminally ill persons of faith “their last act on earth should never be an affront to their maker by the violation of God’s Fifth Commandment – ‘Thou shall not kill’ thyself.”
Father Haskin called on the state’s legislators to uphold “the highest ethical standards and promote the dignity and sanctity of life.”
“Vermont is in a unique position to lead the nation in becoming … an ethical state,” he said.
“Set the national trend that rejects suicide in any form and upholds human dignity,” he urged.
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