Interested in suicide? Vermont is here to help.
Jokes aside, the state of Vermont just removed its residency requirement for assisted suicide. Therefore, anyone, from any state, can head to Vt. and legally take their last breath.
The National Review noted that there are presently ten states, Vt. included, that allow assisted suicide but Vt. is the first of them to actively change its law and allow non-residents to take place. For a country that’s in a clear mental health crisis, this is horrifying news.
The Vt. law was changed after a 75 year-old Connecticut woman, Linda Bluestein, wanted to speed up her death. Bluestein is dying of fallopian tube cancer and was “so relieved” when Governor Phil Scott (R-Vt.) changed the law that “will allow [her] to decide when cancer has taken all from [her] that [she] can bear.”
As it stands, Bluestein would be the first non-Vt. Resident to take advantage of the assisted suicide law.
In order to qualify, people must be within six-months of death but they do not have to live in or have any ties to the state of Vermont.
Amid the news, there’ve been mixed reviews. Cassandra Johnston, a 38-year-old New Yorker, claimed the news was “life-changing.” I think she meant it figuratively but a literal translation is applicable too. “It gives me such a peace of mind to know that if I need that peaceful and compassionate option that it's right next door,” she said.
On the other hand, others are in opposition, “Assisted suicide is ageist, ableist, and an attack on human dignity. Society must push back against the assisted suicide lobby’s goal of death on demand, which is rife with abuse and discrimination. We owe everyone suicide prevention, not abandonment,” Carolyn McDonnell of Americans United for Life argued in Newsweek.
McDonnell added, “Since the decriminalization of assisted suicide increases the rates of non-assisted suicide, suicide tourism will undercut national suicide prevention policies.”
University of Massachusetts law professor Dwight Duncan said the law “opens up this idea of ‘death tourism’ — that you travel there as a place to be killed, It’s one thing to travel to Vermont because they have great ski slopes. It’s another thing to travel there because they have great undertakers.”
This is essentially a modern day eugenics program that's trying to fly under the guise of compassion.
Unfortunately, Vermont not alone in the push. It is the second of the 50 states that allows patients who aren’t from the state to kill themselves in it. Oregon does allow non-residents to kill themselves in the state but that decision was the result of a lawsuit alleging that the previous requirements were “unconstitutional."
For a nation that truly does not value life by promoting abortion, this move in Vt. is not surprising.
