True Dignity Vermont overwhelms opposition at Senate committee hearing.

The following message is from True Dignity Vermont about the recent hearing on assisted suicide in Vermont.

Opponents of assisted suicide hugely outnumbered proponents at tonight's public hearing before the Vermont Senate Judiciary and Health and Welfare committees. 

Three board members of True dignity got two minutes each to speak, as did many other opponents. The common theme was that legalizing assisted suicide would have unintended consequences such as suicide contagion, elder abuse, the perception by sick people of a duty to die, expansion to euthanasia, expansion to the non terminally ill and the incompetent, and a fundamental and corrupting change in the way both patients and doctors view the practice of medicine.

The proponents did not even try to respond to these concerns. Some actually reinforced them by saying things such as "If I were facing Alzheimer's I would want to have the option of death with dignity.". This is either ignorance or a dead giveaway that the proponents will push for the expansion of assisted suicide to people who are either more than six months from death or incompetent, since that expansion would be necessary to include Alzheimer's patients, who become incompetent earlier than six months before death.

Peter Shumlin, the governor of Vermont, has been pushing for the legalization of assisted suicide throughout his political career. Vermont has faced continuous attempts to legalize assisted suicide over the past several years.

For more information go to: Vermont Governor commits to legalizing assisted suicide, again.