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| Representative Denise Provost, John Kelly and other disability activists |
By Evan Lips | September 26, 2017, 19:36 EDT
BOSTON — The last time he traveled to Beacon Hill to testify against physician-assisted suicide legislation, Dr. William Lawton spoke as a physician.
On Tuesday, he spoke as a patient.
Lawton, 74, diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer just months ago, told New Boston Post after delivering his testimony to the Joint Committee on Public Health that his illness has not affected his stance....
Meanwhile, inside the hearing room behind him, lawmakers were focused on the bill’s second hour of testimony. Dozens had spoken in favor of and against twin bills introduced by state Senator Barbara L’Italien (D-Andover) and state Representative Louis Kafka (D-Stoughton). The latest iteration of the bill marks the fifth try for Kafka, who said he was compelled to introduce it following the 2009 death of a constituent stricken with terminal stomach cancer....
Yet others like Dr. William Toffler of Oregon countered that doctors “should not be steering vulnerable people towards suicide.” Physician-assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon nearly 20 years ago. Toffer described the prevalence inside his home state of a “subtle pressure to comply with state-sanctioned suicide.”
Toffler said, however, that there has been a “profound shift in attitudes” in Oregon. He recalled an encounter with a patient — not his — who asked him about two opinions she had received from her oncologists.
“She asked me, and this was the first time in my life I’ve been asked this, whether one of the doctors was a ‘death doctor’,” Toffler recalled. “This was a question that 20 years would be unheard of in the state of Oregon.”
State Representative Denise Provost (D-Somerville), who opposes the bill, posited in her testimony that the committee should refer the proposal to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary “since we would be changing the criminal laws of the commonwealth.”
