[Ed. Note: This guest column by Diane Coleman appeared in nj.com on October 26, 2018, and in the New Jersey Star Ledger print edition on October 29.]
I have an advanced neuromuscular condition and must use breathing support with a mask 18 hours a day. As a severely disabled person who depends on life-sustaining treatment, I would be able to qualify for assisted suicide at any time where it is legal.
If I became despondent, for example if I lost my husband or my job, and decided that I wanted to die, I would not be treated the same as a nondisabled, healthy person who despaired over divorce or job loss.
If anyone doubted that someone like me would qualify for assisted suicide in a state like Oregon, those doubts were laid to rest in December 2017 when an Oregon Public Health Department official clarified in writing:
“Patients suffering from any disease (not just those that typically qualify one for the DWDA [Death With Dignity Act]) may not be able to afford some treatments or medication, and may choose not to pursue some treatments or take some medication for personal reasons. . . . If the patient does not receive treatment or medication (for whatever reason) and is left with a terminal illness, then s/he would qualify for the DWDA.”
In the decade leading up to the passage of Oregon’s assisted suicide referendum in 1997, proponents often revealed their view that people with disabilities should be eligible. Two thirds of “Dr. Death” Jack Kevorkian’s body count were people with non-terminal conditions like multiple sclerosis.
The Hemlock Society contributed to his legal defense fund.
When the Hemlock Society morphed into “Compassion and Choices,” the messaging shifted, partly in an effort to exclude disability rights organizations from the public debate. Assisted suicide is only for people expected to die within six months, they said. The person must self-administer the lethal drugs, so no one else could kill them, they said.
Any reasonably trained lawyer should be able to see the absence of meaningful patient protections in assisted suicide bills. It took a decade to pass the Washington State statute that came next.
All along, disability groups have pointed out the inherent discrimination and empty pretense of safeguards in these bills. Why does everyone else get suicide prevention, while old, ill and disabled people get suicide assistance? How could a doctor who’s known a person for an average of 13 weeks know if they are being pressured to ask for assisted suicide?
Reported reasons for requesting assisted suicide pertain to disability, chronic or acquired due to illness.
Three of these reasons (feeling a loss of autonomy, loss of dignity, feelings of being a burden) could be addressed by consumer-directed in-home care services. However no disclosure or provision of such services is required. Basically, the law operates as though the reasons don’t matter, and nothing need be done to address them.
People who need home care shouldn’t be treated as disposable.
Assisted suicide proponents are fond of saying that many people don’t go through with it, but the lethal drugs give them peace of mind. What if some of the many who change their mind have family members who are not happy about it?
If the only other person present at the end is a greedy heir or tired caregiver, there are no safeguards to determine whether they self-administered the lethal drug or were cajoled, tricked or forced.
Although these and other obvious weaknesses persist in New Jersey’s assisted suicide bill (AB1504), the New Jersey Law Journal not only endorses it, but openly advocates expanding it to include active euthanasia and eligibility for people who are not expected to die in six months. No more incremental strategy, no need to hide the broader agenda.
Throughout last summer, people in wheelchairs with the group ADAPT were dragged out of Congressional hearings and arrested, leading successful efforts to save healthcare for millions of Americans. This same group asserts that “Assisted suicide is not about relieving the suffering of the dying: it is an expression of the most toxic and deadly form of ableism.”
We urge New Jersey lawmakers to reject ableism, to look behind the public relations images of assisted suicide and consider the dangers to the many elders, ill and disabled people who are not safe from mistake, coercion and abuse.
Diane Coleman is the president and CEO of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group which she founded in 1996 to give voice to disability rights opposition to legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The courage of Diane Coleman in her fight against PAS on behalf of the disabled and the elderly who are disabled by age is awe inspiring, as is the courage of John Kelly and all of the others who work so hard to save the lives of others. Their high intelligence and devotion to their mission is recognized by the legislators but more often than not, we find more States willing to put this segment of the population, the disabled and the elderly, at risk to serve the for-profit system which is supported by both political parties.
The younger generations in normal good health are attracted to the message of Compassion and Choices because the matter of life or death is not pertinent. C&C with the pushing of PAS appears to offer control and an easy death and freedom from pain in the unknown future. It is easy to sell to the masses and to the legislators who make the laws that serve the masses. We know, of course, that it is always about the “MONEY” AND THE PRESERVATION OF PROFITS in the delivery of Health Care which accounts for about 20% of our gross GNP. The reality, therefore, is that everyone cannot live as long as they might want to or as long as is technically and medically possible.
I remember walking often a mile or so a day with my friend and neighbor when I was young, many years ago, and being attracted to the message of the Hemlock Society and discussing it with her. She was also attracted to the message.
Diane tells the truth about PAS and how it can and is misused in our culture and under the state laws and how PAS can be misused and is misused to reduce costs of end of life care by forcing the elderly and the disabled into earlier deaths without their knowledge and informed consent.
It is obvious that our laws are being redesigned to make the option for Home Care or Hospice no longer an option but an assignment based on the opinion of “any” licensed physician that the patient has less than six months to live.
When a hospital failed in their attempt to send my husband to eternity without his or my consent by way of an illegal DNR in the hospital chart —that was discovered and thwarted —and we came back home, I refused to put my husband on Hospice, as recommended, and demanded Home Care from Medicare from the same hospital who had attempted to euthanize him. My husband lived to see another birthday and another anniversary.
PAS laws open the door to the ugly reality that human beings are capable of murdering for money and disguising the murder as compassion. Where does C&C get all of its funding to lobby the State Legislatures. Is the money washed?