Lisa Rathke reported on March 14 for the Associated Press that Vermont’s attorney general’s office reached an agreement with Lynda Bluestein, a Connecticut woman who is seeking death by assisted suicide, and Dr. Diana Barnard, who is willing to prescribe the lethal assisted suicide drugs to Bluestein, by dropping the Vermont assisted suicide residency requirement. The article stated that Bluestein, who is living with cancer, will likely be the first non-Vermont resident, to die by assisted suicide in the state.
Some history about the issue.
In October 2021, the assisted suicide lobby group, Compassion and Choices, and Dr. Nicholas Gideonse, an assisted suicide prescribing doctor, launched a court case challenging the Oregon assisted suicide residency requirement.
Instead of defending the residency requirement, the Oregon government agreed. “On March 29 2022, Associated Press reporter Gene Johnson wrote “In a settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Portland on Monday, the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Medical Board agreed to stop enforcing the residency requirement and to ask the Legislature to remove it from the law.”
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Subsequently, an article written by James Reinl for The Daily Mail reported in February 2023 that ‘Oregon becomes America’s first ‘death tourism’ destination.” Dr. Gideonse had opened the first assisted suicide clinic to prescribe lethal assisted suicide drugs for death tourists. At least one person from Texas and an east coast resident had died by assisted suicide in Oregon.
Removing the residency requirement in Oregon and Vermont permits every American to die by assisted suicide and turns Oregon and Vermont into suicide tourist states. The assisted suicide lobby knows that many states will not legalize assisted suicide, so they are forcing states that have legalized assisted suicide to provide death to every American who is seeking one.
LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here.
