Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Bill Continued Forward to Next Session

Neptune, Virginia Beach

On January 16, 2020, HB 1649 was introduced in the Virginia Legislature and referred to the Committee for Courts of Justice.

On February 7, 2020, on a voice vote it was continued forward to the next session in 2021. This was at the request of the bill's sponsor, essentially kicking the can down the road.

This is good news.

Patient-Directed Suicide Has Morphed into Family-Determined Suicide

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Recently the effort to legalize physician-assisted suicide has ramped up in Virginia. For 2,500 years, medicine has claimed the role of healer, but this dangerous public policy would change that by requiring a doctor’s participation in a patient’s demise .

Patients should never be conflicted about which role their physician plays.

Legislative Panel Punts on Assisted Suicide-Euthanasia Proposal

Del. Scott Garrett, MD

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By Katie O' Connor, Virginia Mercury

A group of lawmakers shot down proposals to allow medical-aid-in-dying, also known as physician-assisted suicide [and euthanasia], in Virginia on Wednesday in a review of a series of legislative recommendations on health care.

Del. Kaye Kory, D-Fairfax, requested that the Joint Commission on Health Care study the medical-aid-in-dying debate, in which a patient with less than six months to live obtains lethal drugs through a physician to end his or her life.

Man admits killing mother as part of an assisted suicide pact

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140912/NEWS/140919922

MONTICELLO - Andrew Moore broke down in tears Thursday in Sullivan County Court as he pleaded guilty to fatally strangling his mother as part of an assisted suicide pact.

Moore will face a maximum sentence of five to 15 years behind bars in the plea bargain agreement. In return, he pleaded guilty to a second-degree manslaughter charge for assisting his mother, Margaret "Peggy" Regalia of Bloomingburg, in committing suicide in January.

Judge Frank LaBuda posed one last question before Moore was taken away in handcuffs.

"So, you strangled the last breath out of your mother with your hands?"

"Yes," Moore said as he began to cry.

Regalia was found dead in a house on Nashopa Road in Bloomingburg after her daughter Jennifer and Mike Panet, Jennifer's husband, asked police to check the house when the ShopRite in Montgomery, where Regalia worked, notified them she had missed two days of work.

District Attorney James Farrell said Moore and his mother had a "suicide agreement," to which Moore had confessed when he was initially arrested. Farrell said the investigation confirmed that.

Farrell said Moore, 29 when he strangled his mother, was "very troubled," but his remorse did not appear to be fake.

"The fact he has remorse is a good thing," Farrell said. "But he still has to held accountable for his actions and for taking her life. And he'll have to live with what he did for the rest of his days."

Moore is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 18.

abeam@th-record.com