Hartford Courant’s Alison Cross conducted interviews on both sides of the assisted suicide debate, reporting one advocate against the proposed bill saying “that aid-in-dying opponents, especially those in the state’s disabled community, fear that a ‘right to die could become for them a duty to die,’ as the burden of care and treatment costs pile up.”
Cathy Ludlum, a disability rights advocate who has fought against aid-in-dying legislation with her organization Second Thoughts Connecticut said that aid-in-dying legislation puts the state’s most vulnerable at risk, including individuals living with disabilities, those living in poverty and members of marginalized ethnic groups who already struggle to get equal access to health care.
Ludlum said that she believes proposed aid-in-dying guardrails are destined to widen because “there’s no way to limit this service without discriminating against other people.”
“Once death is a treatment option, it’s a policy, it’s no longer an individual choice. It is something that will affect every person,” Ludlum said. “It starts as an individual choice, but it mushrooms from there once you write it into law.”
Ludlum said that the devil is in the details.
“It’s very different to walk up to someone on the street with a clipboard and say, ‘Do you believe people should have a choice about where and how their life ends?’ and probably everyone would say ‘Sure.’ It is very different when you say, ‘What about the impact on the insurance coverage? What about the impact on doctors? What about the impact on the medical system in general? What about discrimination? What about equality?’ Then people start to have second thoughts,” Ludlum said.
Disability advocates can learn more about Second Thoughts CT here.
Great quote from Cathy!