Physician Assisted Suicide Legislation Stopped in Maryland, For Now
We have some great news to share with you. At midnight on Monday, April 11th the Maryland General Assembly’s 2016 legislative session ended with no action taken on the proposed physician assisted suicide legislation – HB 404/SB 418.
As we told you earlier this spring, the Senate version of the bill was withdrawn from consideration by its lead sponsor before a committee vote could be taken. However, the House version was still technically under consideration by the House Health and Government Operations and House Judiciary Committees until the session expired. Fortunately, both House Committees saw the lack of support for this bill and did not take it up for a vote, leaving the bill to die without any further action.
This is a great victory for everyone who fought so hard to educate Maryland legislators about why physician assisted suicide is unnecessary, dangerous, and wrong for our residents. Together we showed that even though this is an extremely controversial issue, when legislators really learn about the details of this proposed legislation, especially its lack of safeguards for our most vulnerable residents, they have grave doubts about supporting it.
Thank you all for your hard work to defeat this bill.
Of course, supporters of this bill think they made progress in Maryland this session and that they are primed for victory next year. Although we may disagree with their optimism, we know for certain that this bill will be re-filed in 2017 and they will fight even harder to pass it.
We look forward to working with you this fall and into 2017 to ensure that our opposition continues to be strong and legislators know exactly why they should oppose physician assisted suicide. We’ll need all of you and more to defeat this bill again next year.