Disability advocates in Albany and Rochester led reactions to the reintroduction of assisted suicide bills in New York on Monday, January 23rd.
Terminal patients ask New York to legalize help with dying (WHAM Cha 13) included footage from Not Dead Yet’s 1997 U.S. Supreme Court rally against assisted suicide in the case brought by Rochester’s Dr. Tim Quill. Many of us were there, including NDY’s new Director of Minority Outreach, Anita Cameron, shown in video and quoted in Monday’s story.
As the US Supreme Court took up the life and death issue, busloads of disabled people from Rochester were among the hundreds protesting outside. “We were all there for one purpose. To speak out against it,” said Anita Cameron, who was there.
Cameron has MS and suffers a degenerative brain disorder that is stealing away her motor functions. She also works with a group called “Not Dead Yet.” “Society almost teaches that you’re being brave and unselfish if you choose to kill yourself,” she told 13WHAM’s Jane Flasch. . . .
Some people who are disabled see it as promoting a “better dead than disabled” mindset. “These laws are inherently discriminatory against people with disabilities. But I can live a great life as a person with a disability without being a burden,” said Cameron.
Lawmakers in Albany revisit ‘aid in dying’ bill (WROC Cha 8) included both video and an article:
Advocates were in Albany on Monday to reintroduce a bill that would allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults to end their own lives – a bill that’s not sitting well with some local disability rights advocates.
“Our concern is that people who are already in a depressed state because of the cancer or other experiences they’re having, instead of receiving help to live, they’re being given help to die,” said Stephanie Woodward, of the Center for Disability Rights..
The bill would only apply to those who are expected to live fewer than 6 months, but Woodward says she fears the bill leaves room for issues to arise.
“Another fear is that people will be coerced or abused into assisted suicides,” she said.
Woodward says she believes the argument of preventing pain in the terminally ill is not a valid one.
“It’s not necessary, because we have enough pain treatment that no one should have to die in pain,” Woodward said.
Advocates for aid in dying reintroduce bill (Albany Times Union) stated:
But a few opponents of the legislation said Monday that no modification could make physician-assisted suicide safe enough to win their support. They fear patients may be pressured to choose aid in dying or fall prey to heirs seeking speedier access to their inheritance.
Insurance companies might encourage policyholders to take advantage of such a law to reduce medical expenses, they said.
“There’s no way to open this door just enough,” said Adam Prizio, government affairs manager for the Center for Disability Rights. “No matter where you open it, some number of people with disabilities will be killed through coercion, through abuse, or through insurance companies trying to save money.”
Finally, NY again considers doctor-assisted suicide (Journal News) reported:
Julie Farrar, a policy fellow for the Center for Disability Rights Inc., which has offices across upstate, contended the bill doesn’t have enough protections in place to prevent wrongdoing, especially when it comes to families who may be financially incentivized to end a family member’s life due to rising medical costs.
“I’m very wary of physicians being give the legal immunity and right to prescribe a drug or mixture of drugs to end a patient’s life,” she said.
Some assisted suicide bill proponents try to make it seem that disability advocates are fighting against terminally ill people. Actually, we are fighting for everyone. Think of us as the canaries in the coal mine – we live on the front lines of a health care system that is too often focused more on money than care. We know how easy it is for protections to fail, for mistakes to be made, for pressures to be felt. But, unlike the proverbial canaries, we are not expendable, and neither is anyone.
And another appeared 1/24/17, quoting Adam Prizio:
http://legislativegazette.com/archives/4338
Changes to physician-assisted suicide legislation might calm critics’ fears
. . . Looking on were also staunch opponents to the bill, including the Manager of Government Affairs for the Center for Disability Rights, Adam Prizio. According to Prizio, the legislation could serve as a means to coerce disabled people to choose death. “Our society constantly tells people with disabilities ‘your lives are not worth living,’” he said. “Doctors are not immune to that bias, and neither are their patients.”
Prizio also suggested that the means of access to this option will reach further than cancer or other terminally ill patients. “There is no way to just restrict it to the few people who are truly exercising a choice that are supported by their family. It will include people who don’t have any other choices,” Prizio said. “It will include people whose insurance companies will deny them chemotherapy, but pay for their assisted suicide.”