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Assisted suicide waiting period bill draws emotional debate among Maine lawmakers
Jun. 9—AUGUSTA — A proposal to allow doctors to waive the waiting period for terminally ill patients who want to be given life-ending drugs drew an emotional debate from lawmakers in the Maine Senate Monday before it was rejected by one vote.
The fate of the bill is unclear after the Senate voted the proposal down 18-17.
It passed 74-64 in the House of Representatives last week and faces another round of votes in each chamber before it could be sent to Gov. Janet Mills for her signature.
The bill would amend a 2019 law known as the Death with Dignity Act, which legalized physician-assisted suicide in Maine. It allows certain terminally ill patients to have the option to receive life-ending medication so they have control over their death.
Maine's law currently requires a 17-day waiting period from when a person requests the medication to when they can receive the prescription. The change under consideration, LD 613, would allow a doctor to waive all or a portion of the waiting period if they determine it would be in the patient's best interest.
Mills supported the original Death with Dignity Act, but it's unclear if she would support the change. Spokespeople for the governor did not respond Monday to questions about whether she has taken a position on the bill.
The proposal allowing for the waiting period to be waived drew emotional debate from lawmakers who spoke about how they've personally been affected by illness and death.
"This is not an abstract issue for me," said Rep. Kathy Javner, R-Chester, who has metastatic breast cancer, during last week's House debate. "I am living this reality and stand before you today, not in despair, but in hope that we can preserve the dignity and meaning of life, even in the shadow of death."
Javner, who was against the change, said removing the waiting period would take away the time that families and physicians currently have to reflect and consider alternative options. "Let us not respond to suffering with surrender," Javner said. "Let us respond with compassion, with presence, with resources for pain management, with palliative care, with love."
Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, talked about his mother, who died at age 50 from colorectal cancer, during Monday's Senate debate. Stewart said his mother "broke out" of hospice care in order to be at home with her family at the end of her life. "I will always be grateful for that extra month we got," Stewart said.
"I worry about the scenarios about what if they don't get it right and what opportunities are we forestalling through this," he added. "This was the promise that was made originally with this policy, that there wouldn't be that knee-jerk opportunity because of this protection."
Maine is among 10 states and Washington, D.C., where physician-assisted suicide is legal for people with terminal illnesses, according to Death With Dignity, an organization in Portland, Oregon, that advocates for the laws as a means of improving how people with such diagnoses die.
Waiting periods for medication vary state to state and can range from one day to more than two weeks, according to Death With Dignity. Some states do allow waiting periods to be waived if the patient is unlikely to survive.
Maine's Death with Dignity Act has been used by 218 people since it was enacted, according to Michele Meyer, D-Eliot, the sponsor of LD 613. But another nine people have died during the waiting period because their illnesses progressed too rapidly, Meyer said last week.
She said the bill does not change the law's criteria that the patient be terminally ill with a six-month prognosis confirmed by two doctors and that they have the capacity to make informed decisions.
"This is simple and straight forward," Meyer said. "It corrects a rare situation that never should have existed in the first place. Some of us will not know the gift of a long, healthy life. ... Medical aid in dying offers decisionally capable adults an option to avoid prolonged suffering."
In the Senate Monday, Sen. Tim Nangle, D-Windham, talked about his father's lung cancer and the pain he suffered. Nangle said he didn't know if his father, who lived in another state, would have used the Death with Dignity Act, but he said the option for the time waiver should be there.
"This is about their choice," Nangle said. "What do they want to do?"
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