RICHMOND, Va. — A bill that would legalize medically assisted deaths for patients experiencing terminal illnesses has advanced in the Virginia Senate. By a vote of 10-5, lawmakers in the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee moved Senate Bill 280 forward on Tuesday.
According to the text, SB 280 “allows an adult diagnosed with a terminal condition to request an attending health care provider to prescribe a self-administered controlled substance for the purpose of ending the patient's life in a humane and dignified manner.”
Supporters, including members of the organization Compassion & Choices, say a patient should have the choice.
“Nobody has to participate if they don’t want to, but the people who want this option should have it,” Sean Crowley of Compassion & Choices told WUSA9.
However, opponents continue to vocalize their concerns about the bill, including Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington.
“Assisted suicide facilitates tragedies and makes the most vulnerable even more vulnerable," Bishop Burbidge said in a statement Monday. "Legalizing it would place the lives of people with disabilities, people with mental illnesses, the elderly and those unable to afford healthcare - among others - at heightened risk of deadly harm.”
Doctors have previously testified that the legislation is unethical. Dr. John Paul Verderese, an internal medicine physician in Northern Virginia, worries about what kind of precedence this would set.
“I think there's a hazard to passing this bill,” Verderese said. “I think the problem when you introduce physicians and other health care providers into this act, I think it creates a conflict. This will become a treatment that can be abused.”
Medically assisted deaths are already legal in 10 states and Washington, D.C.
There are certain protocols in place:
- A patient must request orally on two occasions and in writing, signed by the patient and one witness, and that the patient be given an express opportunity to rescind his request at any time.
- The bill makes it a Class 2 felony to willfully and deliberately alter, forge, conceal, or destroy a patient's request, or rescission of request, for a self-administered controlled substance to end his life with the intent and effect of causing the patient's death; (ii) to coerce, intimidate, or exert undue influence on a patient to request a self-administered controlled substance for the purpose of ending his life or to destroy the patient's rescission of such request with the intent and effect of causing the patient's death; or (iii) to coerce, intimidate, or exert undue influence on a patient to forgo a self-administered controlled substance for the purpose of ending the patient's life.
- The bill also grants immunity from civil or criminal liability and professional disciplinary action to any person who complies with the provisions of the bill.
- Allows health care providers to refuse to participate in the provision of a self-administered controlled substance to a patient for the purpose of ending the patient's life.
The bill has been referred to the full Virginia Senate for a vote.
Among the supporters is a woman named Barbara Green, who previously told WUSA9 she's considering moving to D.C. from Virginia for the ability to end her life on her own terms. She spoke to WUSA9 when a similar bill stalled.
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