U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford ruled that two medical organizations failed to show that their members — two doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist who oppose the law for religious and ethical reasons — faced any harm.
“Plaintiffs do not claim that any disciplinary action has been taken against their members,” Crawford wrote in his Wednesday ruling. “There is no credible threat of prosecution of Plaintiff’s members by Vermont’s medical regulators.”
The Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare and the Tennessee-based Christian Medical & Dental Associations filed the lawsuit in federal court last year.
Under the law, medical professionals aren’t required to write a lethal prescription but are obligated to alert eligible patients of the option — as they are of all available medical options. Doctors who object to the law can refer patients to the information elsewhere. In court, the state Attorney General’s Office allowed that such a referral could simply be a website, Crawford noted.
“The court concludes that Plaintiffs lack jurisdictional standing to challenge the constitutionality of Act 39 in the absence of any likelihood of harm,” Crawford wrote.
Guy Page, advocacy director for the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, said his organization is considering appealing the case to a higher court.
“Court cases like this don’t necessarily end with one judge’s decision,” he said.
Read the full decision here:
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America is under constant siege from religious zealots who have nothing to do with Islam. Radical Muslims don’t scare me, after all they only want to kill me. I’m terrified of radical Christians who seek to force me to follow their religious doctrine, take away my freedom and self-determination, and destroy my way of life.
It would never occur to me to impose my beliefs on anyone else and I’m astonished at the sanctimonious right-wing Christians in this country who lack equanimity and compassion for other points of view. I am thankful our laws were written to defy those who seek to impose their beliefs on the rest of us who do not measure up to their moral barometer.
All is not well where assisted suicide is legal. The foundation of assisted suicide movement is crumbling under the weight of non transparent pitfalls. There is documented abuse see Thomas Middleton Fed case where he was killed via the OR policy for his assets. A public policy failure.
I was my wife’s 24/7 caregiver during her last 18 months of declining autonomy.
Pitfalls in assisted suicide laws need attention. We already have the right to refuse treatment. Many who believe in the concept under the choice banner have second-thoughts org when they read the language of the actual bill and realize our choice is Ignored and certainly not assured.
This is not about people who are dying anyway.
Amending Colorado’s Prop 106 is sorely needed (and OR,WA,CA). The initiative a monopoly and profit center was bought for $8,000,000 of deception. Even as they proclaimed that the poison must be self administered they did not provide for an ordinary witness. The difference is that without a witness it allows forced euthanasia but with a witness they would up hold individual choice.
Amendments would include requiring a witness to the self administration, restore the illegality of falsifying the death certificate require the posting of the poison applied in the medical record for the sake of good stewardship for future studies, register organ/tissue trafficking, reveal commissions and memorials paid to the corporate facilitators and keep all records for transparent public safety policy.
These Oregon model bills do not assure our choice and ignore our choice by empowering predatory corporations over us.
Bradley Williams
President
MTaas org