A woman who traveled to Vermont to use their newly-expanded assisted suicide law was aided by a news crew who vouched for her being of “sound mind”. Setting aside the compromise in journalistic integrity, this is an example of how supposed safeguards against abuse of assisted suicide are easily circumvented by persons who want it to happen.
Sadly, if you read the Boston Globe’s article carefully, the poor woman seemed to want more time. More time to write letters, to see friends and do the things people want to do when they are dying. Instead she set an artificial date for her death which seemed to induce regular stress for her and family. The fake solution proffered by the article seemed to be for her to have committed suicide in CT. But how about no suicide at all, and a chance for a peaceful and natural end to one’s life with the help of hospice instead of the state.
You can read the full article here.
Three ways the original “safeguards” were circumvented.
First, the initial residency requirement was removed because of pressure by Compassion & Choices. If you were there on the day they voted to legalize assisted suicide in Vermont, you would have seen a few grey-haired ladies sitting in attendance knitting quietly to represent the homey nature of their bill. The inference being that they were there only to help a few, local, terminally ill patients die on their own terms. Jump 11 years later and Vermont now invites people from other states and is an assisted suicide destination. Unable to pass the law in Connecticut, Compassion & Choices used a lawsuit to pressure Vermont to expand theirs. The assisted suicide activists are never satisfied and are always seeking expansion. In Connecticut, they don’t even hide their plan (see bottom).
Second, the fantasizing and biased reporter covering her suicide for the Boston Globe signed a legal document meant for a disinterested person to attest to a person’s mental competence. The attestation is meant to exclude relatives, family members, doctors, any beneficiaries, a nursing home owner or employee, etc. because they could have an interest in her suicide. A reporter interested in writing a riveting advocacy piece about someone’s suicide is clearly not disinterested in that suicide. They wanted it to happen and broke the rules to make it so. The Boston Globe revealed as much in their “addendum” to the piece.
But wait there is more . . . an accompanying photographer who had an inherent interest in the suicide also attested to the victim’s competence! Rules are made to be broken and there is no apparent exception even when there are laws and supposed “safeguards” and an expectation of professional conduct.
Expansion is the playbook, even for Connecticut.
From Alex Shadenberg’s blog . . .
“For instance Josh Elliott, a three term member of the Connecticut House, and a sponsor of previous assisted suicide bills was interviewed by Paul Bass for the New Haven Independent on January 4, 2024. Bass reported:
Elliott has been sponsoring bills for years to allow terminally ill people to take their lives (aka “aid in dying”). The bill finally passed the legislature’s Public Health committee; it got stuck in Judiciary.
The version he plans to resubmit this year has been narrowed to cover terminally ill people with prognoses of less than six months to live, with sign-offs from two doctors and a mental health professional, monthly check-ins, and at least a year of state residence.
“Almost no one” would qualify under that restricted version of the law, Elliott said. But passing it would open the door to evaluation and expansion.
For further clarification Elliott told Bass in the wider interview at 21:30 that:
The bill would be, um, exceptionally narrow in scope, it would be the most narrow in scope bill of this kind were we to pass it. It would be, uh, six months left to live, you have to get sign-offs from multiple doctors—two doctors and one mental health physician—uh, and then you need to go for frequent check ins—I think it’s like once a month—and you have, there is a one year residency requirement, so there are so many ways we limit who could actually use this bill, to the point I believe if we were actually to implement the way that we are talking about it, almost nobody would use it. But the important thing for me is to get this bill on the books, and then see how it’s working, and if it’s not and people aren’t using it, than make those corrections to actually allow people to use it. So that is what we’ve been discussing.
Elliott is clearly explaining his “bait and switch” tactic, that his goal is to pass a “restrictive” assisted suicide bill and then expand the law later.”