Seven activists identifying as “Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide” presented an alternative viewpoint at a screening of “Prescription for Peace of Mind: An Option for the Terminally Ill” at the New Haven Free Public Library on Wednesday, August 11.
The seven held signs reading “Suicide is Not a Medical Treatment” and “Medical Assisted Suicide threatens the elderly, the poor, the disabled, you.” They passed out leaflets* with nine reasons to oppose legislation allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to those they define as terminally ill. Five went inside to raise their objections directly to the two filmmakers. The screening was sparsely attended.
Presented as part of the New Haven Documentary Film Series, the film makes no pretense of objectivity. In addition to the three individuals whose very sad stories are told, family members who have spoken in support of MAS [medically assisted suicide] are also interviewed at length. In a statement perhaps unintended to be so revealing, one family member, a nurse who also attended the screening, remarks that her reason for supporting the legislation is that the hospice care for her dying father was so inadequate and unhelpful.
The film also features Compassion and Choices Connecticut Field Director Tim Appleton and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg (D., Fairfield), a long-time prime mover of MAS legislation in Connecticut. The voices of disability justice and other activists who testify before our state legislature annually and work continually to educate about the dangers of MAS are nowhere to be heard.
The five challenged this glaring and deliberate omission and discussed the dangers of MAS in detail, recounting painful personal stories of unyielding institutional pressure by the medical system to end life-sustaining treatment for their own loved ones. They cited cost-cutting imperatives by hospitals and insurance companies combined with prejudice against the disabled, the elderly, and the poor as twin threats which can only be further enabled by this legislation. In the words of activist Elaine Kolb, Medical Assisted Suicide is not a “slippery slope” but a juggernaut.
The most recent Assisted Suicide bill in Connecticut was voted out of the Public Health Committee for the first time in 2021, then moved to the Judiciary Committee which chose not to bring it to a vote. Opponents expect another bill to be brought forward next year and are getting prepared.
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SAVE THE DATE: Saturday, October 2, 2021. “NOT DEAD YET” community speak-out and singalong with invited speakers to be announced. New Haven Free Public Library Community Program Room, 2-4 pm. Fully accessible venue. Masks required.
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* Flyer:
PRESCRIPTION FOR WHOSE PEACE OF MIND?
Medical Assisted Suicide is fraught with peril for the most vulnerable among us- the elderly, disabled, and poor, who are already viewed by the medical system and the insurance companies as too costly to treat and thus expendable. There are no imaginable “safeguards” that can change this reality. To legalize this practice would only increase the discrimination and trauma many of us experience in our ongoing struggle for decent health care for ourselves, our families and our loved ones, a struggle which has already cost the lives of far too many.
We ask you to think critically as you view the film, “Prescription for Peace of Mind: An Option for the Terminally Ill.”
Nine Reasons to Oppose Medical Assisted Suicide
- In our cost-cutting health care system, it encourages the rationing of health care for the most “expensive” patients: the elderly, disabled, seriously ill and poor.
- It subjects the vulnerable to potential overt or covert abuse that can never be adequately monitored.
- It encourages a rush to judgement as to how “terminal illness” is defined.
- It promotes the idea of extreme individualism and self-sufficiency, the notion that being vulnerable and needing care is somehow “undignified,” the idea that we live in a vacuum with no responsibility for or to each other.
- It erodes patient confidence in our health care providers, causing justified fear that they will advocate for the suicide option in difficult cases.
- It requires doctors to lie about the facts of a patient’s death, citing the illness as the cause, not the ingestion of the lethal medication.
- It does not necessarily guarantee a “peaceful” or immediate end of life.
- It promotes suicide as a desirable option at a time where suicide among the young has become an epidemic and suicide prevention is public policy.
- It opens the door to involuntary euthanasia of those deemed “defective,” such as people with advanced dementia or severe disability that renders them unable to communicate.
For further discussion of the reasons to oppose medical assisted suicide, please go to www.notdeadyet.org and http://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted suicide.
The advocates of Medical Assisted Suicide (or “Aid in Dying,” as they call it) legislation in Connecticut and elsewhere have tried to make it appear that the only opposition to it comes from religious conservatives. This is untrue. Social progressives are increasingly coming to understand just how dangerous it is and to recognize it as bad public policy.
To join the growing local email list for Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide, please contact joan.cavanagh@gmail.com, or add your name to the sign-up sheet today.
Medical assisted suicide threatens the poor, the elderly, the disabled and you.
Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide
08 11 2021