Vermont Senate Rejects Assisted Suicide Effort

April 24, 2012

The Vermont Senate has defeated for the second time this legislative session an effort to legalize physician-assisted suicide, Baptist Press reports. On April 12, supporters of assisted suicide failed to get the votes needed to suspend Senate rules to consider the proposal as an amendment -- they needed 22 votes, a three-fourths majority, but gained only 11. Eighteen senators voted against suspending the rules. Under the measure, people considered to have fewer than six months to live would have been granted the legal right to request a lethal drug dosage.