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“Physician Assisted Suicide” Dies in Vermont Senate

Apr 17   -  Craig and Deb Bensen

Source: bioedge.org
Source: bioedge.org

BILL FOR “Physician Assisted Suicide” DIES IN VERMONT SENATE
Prayer Support Vital Part of Pro-Life Victory

by Craig Bensen

Background

Vermont is, according to Planned Parenthood and others, the most “abortion safe” state in the USA. We have no restrictions on abortion and no political will to change this status. Simple restrictions like Parental Notification that enjoy wide acceptance across the country and poll favorably even in Vermont cannot even get a discussion in any legislative committee.

When the pro-euthanasia lobby decided in 2007 that Vermont would follow Oregon as the next state to adopt “Death with Dignity” legislation, few thought that resistance would be successful. Yet the first run of the proposed “Physician Assisted Suicide” bill failed to clear the Vermont House in 2007, shot down by a surprise vote of 63-87.

Come 2011 and Vermont has a new governor, Peter Shumlin, whose team received substantial support and funding from the pro-suicide lobby. Gov. Shumlin has a new super-majority in the legislature where Democrats & Progressives comprise two thirds of the House and the Senate. In his inaugural address he makes a promise that the suicide bill will be on his desk awaiting his signature by March 2011.

His promise goes unfulfilled despite the efforts of the pro-suicide lobby and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of out-of-state dollars. Seems that the House still remembered the embarrassment of the 2007 loss. The Speaker of the House let it be known that, even though he was sure he had the votes to pass the suicide bill, the House would not touch the bill until the Senate had passed it. Over in the Senate, the Democrats leadership polled their members and assessed that the suicide bill had at best a 15-15 tie if brought to the floor. The Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who opposed the bill, would be the one casting the tie-breaking vote. So the Kill Bill languished in 2011.

Come 2012, Gov. Shumlin starts twisting arms in the Senate. This results in the Senate Judiciary Committee taking testimony on the Kill Bill in March. The members of the committee were unpersuaded by the testimony and opposed the bill 2-3 effectively killing the bill for 2012.

Then on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, we sent out this message

Legislative Prayer Alert!
Suicide Bill Sneak Attack!

This morning the Vermont Senate Health & Welfare Committee attached the “Doctor Assisted Suicide” bill (Kill Bill) to another bill that the House had sent over to the Senate. This is an end run around the Senate Judiciary, who vetted the bill and opposed it 2-3, thus keeping it locked up in committee and legislatively “dead” for this year.

The “Kill Bill” is now a part of SJ 104 (initially H.157) “An act relating to restrictions on tanning beds”. The Committee ruled the “Kill Bill” germane as a “health” bill, attached it to the existing “tanning bed” bill and voted the whole mess out of committee 3-2.

Unless Senate leadership can find a way to shuffle this bill off to another committee, the “Kill Bill” will soon be on the schedule for a floor vote of the full Senate.

Prayers are needed!

Pray and declare that

(1) the Culture of Death will not be further established in Vermont;
(2) that the devices and maneuvers of pro-Death advocates will be frustrated;
(3) that all Senators opposing the “Kill Bill” will be on hand for a floor vote and that the bill will be defeated. 

Also pray for strength, energy and strategy to be poured out upon those who are leading the fight against the Culture of Death in Montpelier.


Many joined us in prayer and on Thursday, April 12, 2012, we sent out this message:

Suicide Bill Dies in Vermont Senate this afternoon

This afternoon the Vermont Senate considered the attachment of the Kill Bill to the Tanning Bed bill.  Lt. Gov. Phil Scott started the process by ruling the attachment to be “non-germane” to the original bill. The pro-death side then asked for a full senate vote on the “germane-ness” question - technically, to “suspend the rules to allow the attachment as germane”. This suspension of the rules required a 75% affirmative vote to pass, or 22 of the 29 votes present.

After a long period of interrogation and debate, the actual vote was 11 votes to suspend (22 were needed) and 18 not to suspend the rules.

This vote serves as a proxy for a full vote on the Kill Bill itself, demonstrating that the pro-death forces do not have the votes to move the Kill Bill though the VT Senate.

In addition, many of the Senators were quite upset at the way the Kill Bill was “hijacked” from the Judiciary Committee and attached to the Tanning Bed Bill by the Health & Welfare Committee. The chair of Health & Welfare, Sen. Hinda Miller D-Chit., was interrogated at length and publicly chastised by Sen. Dick Sears, Chair of Judiciary, regarding this egregious breach of process and protocol.

How did we do on our prayers?

We prayed and declared that -

(1) the Culture of Death would not be further established in Vermont;
And the Culture of Death took a big hit today, stopped dead in its tracks…

(2) that the devices and maneuvers of pro-Death advocates would be frustrated;
And the end-run maneuver of the pro-death advocates was defeated AND FIRMLY REBUKED by a 60% vote of the Vermont Senate.

(3) that all Senators opposing the “Kill Bill” would be on hand for a floor vote and that the bill (and all related votes) would be defeated. 
All of our folks were on hand—it was the other side who was missing one of their votes due to illness.

Now we continue to pray and declare that -
    (4) supporting the Culture of Life will become an election positive that attracts voters to candidates.

And we thank the Lord for the strength, energy and strategy He poured out upon those who are leading the fight against the Culture of Death at the State House in Montpelier.


POSTSCRIPT

Some of us regularly pray ” That the plans, schemes, ‘dirty tricks’, etc., of those seeking to manipulate the elections would be exposed…” We took singular delight in the news story that ran the next day. The very evening that the Kill Bill was defeated in the VT Senate our Gov. Shumlin experienced “exposure”…

Bare Gov. Shumlin barely bails on bothersome bears

BURLINGTON FREE PRESS | 6:33 PM, Apr. 13, 2012 | Matt Sutkoski

Gov. Peter Shumlin was naked, ready for bed, when he heard a fuss in his backyard one night earlier this week. He looked out to see four bears looting his bird feeders.

His Department of Fish and Wildlife has issued cautions about leaving bird feeders up this time of year, because they can attract bears, and the state also cautions from time to time that bears are dangerous. But the governor is territorial: Shoo! he yelled in his “strongest Vermonter,” as he put it, rushing into the yard and yelling for the interlopers to bug off.

The bears were not amused.

Waiting outside, Shumlin recalled, were two cubs and two adult bears
(though Fish and Wildlife officials think there might have been three cubs and a mother).

The governor was not exactly dressed for the encounter.

“Real Vermont boys don’t wear pajamas,” he said — meaning he was naked. He told WDEV radio host Mark Johnson he was wearing as much as the bears were.

The bears had given the hollering, naked governor a bit of deference, enough so that Shumlin went outside to retrieve the bird feeders, he said, so the bears wouldn’t return for the food. But as the governor started to carry two of the feeders inside, the bears came back.

Shumlin again used his strongest Vermonter to scare the animals off; they ran to the edge of the yard.

He went back outside to get the other two feeders. The bears appeared unhappy to have their food source taken away. This was especially true of the largest bear, Shumlin said. “He just booked it for the porch,” Shumlin recalled.

The governor took the two feeders and made a beeline for his door, with what Shumlin called the papa bear in hot pursuit.

“When I opened the door, he was on the porch and five feet from the door,” Shumlin said. “I screamed through that door. I didn’t know if the bear was coming through.”

Vermont Fish and Wildlife Chief Warden Col. David LeCours said the four bears Shumlin saw might have actually been three cubs and a sow, with no papa bear involved. The sow might have been aggressive because it perceived the governor as a threat to her cubs.

He said if the governor or anyone else is confronted by a bear, the person should back away slowly and make a lot of noise.

“Don’t turn and run,” LeCours advised. “We have a lot of animals that view that as their advantage.”

Shumlin is an avid runner, he said, so he was able to move pretty quickly away from the bears — though bears easily can outrun humans.

 

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Craig and Deb Bensen

Deb and Craig have 35 years of pastoral and leadership experience with the Cambridge United Church (Cambridge, VT)  as well as numerous para-church groups, i.e., National Day of Prayer, Aglow, Vermont Prayer Force, The New England Alliance, Focus Renewal Ministries, Vision New England, and the CMI Radio Network.