“New Jersey doctors would be legally permitted to write prescriptions to enable terminally ill patients to end their lives under legislation that advanced Thursday after a dramatic hearing in Trenton.
The “Aid in Dying” bill cleared the state Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee in a 6-3 vote following 90 minutes of often tearful, pleading testimony from people who spoke for and against it…
Sweeney and Senate sponsor Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, do not sit on the health committee but participated instead of Sens. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, and Fred Madden, D-Gloucester, who voted against the bill when it was up for a committee vote in 2016…”
Matthew Valliere, Executive Director of the Patients Rights Action Fund, released a statement saying, “NJ Senate President Sweeney subverted the democratic process by ejecting Senators Rice and Madden, both Democrats, from their rightful seats on the health committee yesterday so that he and Senator Scutari could ramrod a dangerous assisted suicide bill through by voting yes, when Rice and Madden would have voted no, as they have in the past. The progressive constituency of those districts have been robbed of their right to representative government, all to forward an inherently discriminatory and dangerous public policy that puts a great number of vulnerable people at risk of deadly harm through mistakes, abuse, and coercion.”
“This ‘demonstrates a shameful abuse of power by legislative leaders to move a bill that might have otherwise failed to garner enough votes to be released from committee’, Tasy said.”
Read more at NJ.com…