News
May, 2024
HB1283 Gets Bipartisan Support in Senate
Sent to Interim Study
(Concord, NH - May 16, 2024) Advocates for a bipartisan bill that would allow mentally capable, terminally ill adults in New Hampshire to have the option of medical aid in dying expressed deep sadness that the Senate voted 17-7 Wednesday to refer to the bill for interim study but vowed to push for the bill’s passage in 2025.
The House passed the NH End of Life Options Act (HB 1283) in March by a 179-176 vote, the first time a Republican-led legislative body ever approved a medical aid-in-dying bill in the nation.
“We are heartbroken on behalf of terminally ill New Hampshire residents who desperately need this peaceful dying option by the Senate’s vote to refer the bill for interim study. There is no need for further study when we have decades of data and experience from 10 other states proving that medical aid in dying is a time-tested option to relieve unbearable suffering when no other option provides it,” said Rebecca Brown, a Sugar Hill resident and director of the NH Alliance for End of Life Options.
“We thank our bipartisan sponsors Rep. Marjorie Smith and Rep. Bob Lynn for their leadership in the House, and Sen. Debra Altschiller, co-sponsor in the Senate. And we thank all the House and Senate members who voted to respect the wishes of 71% of New Hampshire residents who support passing a medical aid-in-dying law. We know that public support for medical aid in dying is so strong that it is just a matter of time before we pass it.”
CONTACT:
Rebecca Brown
Director, NH Alliance for End of Life Options
Sugar Hill, NH
(603) 728-5557
June 2023
7 in 10 NH people want medical aid in dying option
First ever poll shows support across all faiths, parties, regions
Seven out of 10 Granite Staters (71 percent) support medical aid-in-dying legislation to give terminally ill adults in New Hampshire the legal option to take prescription medication to gently end intolerable suffering, while only about one out of six residents (17 percent) oppose the bill.
Those are among the findings of the first-ever state poll on the issue of 1,130 residents, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Oct. 19-23, and released at a news conference Wednesday, Jan. 31.. A demographic summary of the results is at the bottom of this news release and posted at
https://bit.ly/NHPollmedicalaidindying
The news conference also announced the public launch of the grassroots campaign by the NH Alliance for End of Life Options to pass medical aid-in-dying legislation, the bipartisan NHEnd of Life Options Act, which has 10 sponsors.
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the NH End of Life Options Act (HB1283) on Wednesday, Feb. 7 at 10 a.m. at the Legislative Office Building in Concord, next to the State House. More than 450 people already had submitted online testimony as of Jan. 31.
“This survey shows strong support for this compassionate legislation, regardless of political persuasion, religion, or the region of the state,” said Rebecca Brown, a Sugar Hill resident and director of the NH Alliance for End of Life Options, which sponsored the poll. “It also shows majority support of gun owners, people living with disabilities, and Gov. Sununu’s supporters. It is a crystal clear signal to the Legislature that the overwhelming majority of their constituents want them to show love and compassion for their dying ones, so they can avoid needless suffering and die peacefully in their sleep, as most people want.”
Read the full press release here.
June 2023
Growing support for MAiD?
National radio show examines.
The WBUR-Boston national news show On Point aired a fine discussion on the state of medical aid in dying in the U.S.
Featured was Dr. Diana Barnard, the Vermont physician who was part of the lawsuit that led to her state’s allowing non-residents to qualify for aid in dying.
Also featured was Katie Englehart, author of The Inevitable, a recent book examining the right-to-die movement. Other guests and listeners told powerful stories.
“Patients are really the ones who are driving this, who are surprised by how complicated medical care gets toward the end of life, and that their basic wishes of wanting to be comfortable and wanting to be at home are harder to achieve than they ever imagined,” Dr. Barnard said during the program.
You can listen and see the transcript here. Well worth checking out!
May 2023
Vermont now allows non-residents to use MAiD.
Here’s what you need to know.
Vermont has become the first state in the country to go through a legislative process to allow non-residents to request medications to hasten their death. Gov. Phil Scott signed the bill into law May 2.
With the residency requirement dropped, it will be possible for terminally ill people to travel to Vermont to pursue - under strict conditions – the option of choosing the time and place of their death. Our colleagues at Patient Choices Vermont have created a fact sheet for out-of-state people. See the fact sheet here.
Patients must meet all of Vermont 's other criteria for medical-aid-in-dying (MAiD) eligibility. The patient must be over 18 and mentally competent. They must be able to self-administer the life ending prescription. And they must be judged by two Vermont physicians as having less than six months to live. This means that out-of-state residents must establish a relationship with a Vermont physician. Physicians may make individual decisions about how they will accept MAiD patients and some may decide to only accept patients enrolled in hospice, for instance.
Critically for people in other states, the entire procedure for medical aid in dying should be completed in Vermont. A New Hampshire resident should not get the prescription in Vermont and bring it home to use.
Here’s why: In New Hampshire, where MAiD is not yet legal, “assisting suicide” is a criminal offense. If a patient received the prescription in Vermont and used it here in New Hampshire with the knowledge of or in the presence of friends or family, those loved ones could potentially be implicated in the death. Vermont and the other nine states and District of Columbia where medical aid in dying is legal specifically state that MAiD is not suicide. Everyone involved with the death is protected by law.
We’re very pleased that Vermont has opened up MAiD to more people. And this highlights why we in N.H. need a MAiD law of our own. Why should our citizens be forced to travel away from home to exercise a right to die? Most people say they want to die at home. It’s time we in the “Live Free or Die” state honor that.
If you or anyone you know is interested in pursuing medical aid in dying in Vermont, please contact NH Options first. We are working with our partners, Patient Choices Vermont, to keep New Hampshire residents informed and offer guidance.
September 2022
Vermont lawsuit seeks to make medical aid in dying available to non-residents
But could a NH resident come home to die?
In all but one state in the U.S. where MAID is legal, a terminally ill patient must be a resident of the state in order to qualify. The exception is Oregon, where a court earlier this year ruled the residency requirement is unconstitutional.
Earlier this month, a Connecticut patient, joined by a Vermont physician and the national advocacy group Compassion & Choices, filed a similar claim in Vermont. The suit is on behalf of Lynda Bluestein, a terminally ill Connecticut resident, and Vermont physician Diana Barnard, who specializes in hospice and palliative care.
Bluestein, 75, has fallopian tube cancer. Medical aid in dying is not authorized in Connecticut. She would like the option to access medical aid in dying in Vermont should her suffering become unbearable.
Dr. Barnard, an associate professor of family medicine at University of Vermont, treats patients from both Vermont and northern New York in her regular practice. The residency requirement contained in Vermont’s medical aid-in-dying law prevents Dr. Barnard from supporting her New York and other out-of-state patients’ requests for medical aid in dying.
Oregon is the exception because in March, a settlement was reached in a federal lawsuit brought by an Oregon physician represented by Compassion & Choices. The suit argued that the residency requirement in Oregon’s medical aid-in-dying law violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment.
As a result of the settlement, the Oregon Health Authority, Oregon Medical Board, and a local district attorney all agreed not to enforce the residency restriction. The health authority also agreed to initiate a legislative request to permanently remove the law’s residency restriction.
The Vermont lawsuit argues that medical aid in dying is one of the only medical practices that is inaccessible to residents of specific jurisdictions. In other words, because other medical treatments or practices are not denied to patients because of their zip code, neither should medical aid in dying.
We want to note that NH law criminalizes assisting with "suicide.” MAID is not suicide - every state where it is legal specifies this. However, where it is not legal (like NH), it could be problematic for a patient to qualify in another state and come home to die in the company of their loved ones. We at NH Options will be following all this closely and keep you informed. Perhaps we should propose legislation making dying though MAiD exempt from the assisting suicide law?
February 2022
The Lancet Commission on the Value of Death: Modern health care has an unhappy relationship with death. We need to improve the relationship.
The Lancet is one of the world’s oldest and most respected medical journals. It has just launched the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death. The Commission writes: “Our relationship with death and dying has become unbalanced, and we advocate a rebalancing. At the core of this rebalancing must be relationships and partnerships between people who are dying, families, communities, health and social care systems, and wider civic society.
“It's an age-old idea that a good life and a good death go together. Our title has proved to be a rich source of thinking, helping us recognise the value of death in a world that tends to deny death any value. The simplest proposition of the value of death is that ‘without death every birth would be a tragedy,’ and in a very crowded world we are the edge of such a tragedy. In the report we explore the many values of death.”
January 2022
In Colombia, euthanasia right is extended to non-terminal patients with unbearable suffering
The option of euthanasia for terminally ill, competent patients has been legal since 1997. Last summer, the Colombia Constitutional Court extended that right to patients suffering debilitating illnesses where death was not imminent. In January 2022, two citizens, a 60-year old man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a 51-year old woman with ALS became the first to exercise this right. The woman’s case gained international attention when her request was blocked last fall. Read a good news summary of right to die issues in Latin America here. The stories may surprise you.