Around New England

Physician-Assisted Suicide Bill Recommended By Second Committee In Massachusetts Legislature

May 1, 2024

A bill that would legalize physician-assisted suicide has gotten a favorable vote from a second legislative committee, leading some who read the tea leaves of the Massachusetts Legislature to wonder if this is the year it passes.

The state legislature’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing reported the measure (Massachusetts Senate Bill 1331(“An Act Relative To End of Life Options”)) favorably on Thursday, April 25.

The 20-member committee has seven state senators (six Democrats and one Republican) and 13 state representatives (10 Democrats and three Republicans).

The Joint Committee on Public Health held a hearing on the bill on October 20, 2023, and reported the bill out of committee favorably on March 28, 2024. That 18-member committee has seven state senators (six Democrats and one Republican) and 11 state representatives (nine Democrats and two Republicans).

The Joint Committee on Health Care Financing had the bill 28 days before voting it out of committee favorably last week.

Details of the committee votes are not public. Most committees in the Massachusetts Legislature vote on bills in closed session and do not make public the tally or the votes of individual members.

This is the earliest in the state’s two-year legislative session that the bill has been recommended by the Joint Committee on Public Health, and it’s the first time the bill has made it out of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, said Melissa Stacy, Northeast regional advocacy manager for Compassion & Choices, according to MASSterList.

Compassion & Choices, which supports assisted suicide, is a successor to two organizations, including one known from 1980 to 2003 as the Hemlock Society.

Massachusetts voters rejected an assisted suicide ballot question in 2012, 49 to 51 percent.

 

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