A Disability Perspective on the Issue of Physician Assisted Suicide – Disability and Health Journal

Several blogs wrote about this issue late last month when a press release announced the publication of an issue of the Disability and Health Journal dedicated to articles on assisted suicide and disability.  I held back from announcing the issue on this blog for one very important reason: A snafu resulted in the press release being issued before the journal in question was available online.

I’ve mentioned before that I love it when people save me time and work when it comes to writing.  Writer and editor Michael Cook has just published a summary of the contents of the journal issue on Mercatornet.com – along with some interesting commentary – in “Is Death Better than Disability?“:

When assisted suicide is legalised most of the people who will die are disabled. And American disability advocates take a very dim view of it. This is the theme of a hard-hitting series of articles in the latest issue of the Disability and Health Journal.

The editor, Suzanne McDermott, of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, writes that she changed her own mind after studying the issue. At first she believed that assisted suicide was solely a personal autonomy issue. But eventually she was persuaded that it is at the heart of the movement for disability rights: “Almost all people at the end of life can be included in the definition of ‘disability’. Thus, the practice of assisted suicide results in death for people with disabilities.”

The special issue is a response to a controversial 2008 decision by the American Public Health Association (APHA) to back “aid in dying” (ie, assisted suicide). This slipped almost completely under the media’s radar, but it means that the official policy of the “oldest, largest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world” – 30,000 of them – is to support assisted suicide to the hilt. Or, as they prefer to call it in Oregon, “patient-directed dying” or “physician aid-in-dying”.

Rather than worrying about some ambiguous language in the Obama administration’s health reform legislation or scrutinising the publications of his health advisors for a few indiscreet phrases, the elderly and their relatives ought to be worried about the 30,000 members of the APHA. They are the ones who could be sitting on the “death panels”. The authors of the articles in the Disability and Health Journal certainly are worried.

The journal issue has articles by authors familiar to readers of this blog.  Marilyn Golden, writing with Tyler Zoanni, provides a public policy analysis of assisted suicide and its impact on people with disabilities; Carol Gill deconstructs and rebuts some of the favorite “straw man” arguments used against disability activists who oppose legalization of assisted suicide; and NDY founder and president Diane Coleman, who gives a point-by-point rebuttal to the “Autonomy, Inc.” brief in Baxter vs. State of Montana. “Autonomy” is a pro-assisted suicide group. Its board is mostly people with disabilities. The group only seems to surface only when called upon to sign onto legal briefs or make a statement to the press related to assisted suicide legislation.

All of these articles are well worth reading.  The authors bring a wide range of experience and viewpoints in their explorations of the issues surrounding assisted suicide and euthanasia.

On a cautionary note, I would hope that academics, scholars and other professionals connected to disability take the lesson of the American Public Health Association to heart.  Most of the members of of the disability group within APHA had paid little attention to the intricacies of the assisted suicide debate until it was shoved on their plate.  This is likely to be a scenario that gets played out time and time again unless there is renewed interest in the debate from disability advocates.

In the end, these highly talented, committed and caring people lost the battle after an initial victory of stalling a vote on the decision to endorse assisted suicide for a year.  They had to learn everything about the debate from scratch while their opponents were unified, well organized and well-connected.

The consequences of that disadvantage can be seen even now in Gloria Krahn’s description of the struggle within the organization.  Among other things, she describes a “compromise” that was reached over terminology.  At the insistence of the Disability  Section members, “Death with Dignity” was rejected as a term for assisted suicide, but “aid in dying” was put in its place.

Those of us familiar with the marketing efforts of pro-assisted suicide advocates know that “aid in dying” is the preferred term promoted by the groups like Compassion & Choices.  Rather than being a “compromise,” this was just one aspect of the overall victory.  (Obviously, though, the rejection of “death with dignity” was a victory of sorts since the term has a direct bearing on people with disabilities, who get to be viewed as “undignified.”)

I don’t want that last word to get taken wrongly.  These individuals in the Disability Section of APHA did the best that could be expected under the circumstances.  Like everyone else connected to disability, they’re confronted with critical issues commanding a great deal of attention, especially in the current economic meltdown.

It’s time to recognize though, that this is one more critical issue for disability advocates, and maybe moreso because of the economic meltdown when people are looking for guilt-free ways to eliminate society’s “financial burdens.”

To access the journal issue, and its articles, go to this site.  For this issue only, there is no registration required.  It’s fitting, I think, to make a disability-themed journal issue so easily accessible.  –Stephen Drake.