Contact: Sheryl Grossman (314) 863-3211—text, prd2bbloomie1@hotmail.com
(March 6, 2019, Baltimore, MD) The Disability Community calls out the MD state legislature! Not only did the House Health and Government Operations and House Judiciary sub-committees vote to advance their heinous physician-assisted suicide bill, but they chose to do it on the National Disability Day of Mourning, the day we remember the thousands of disabled people murdered at the hands of our caregivers.
By doing so, Maryland confirms its blatant disregard for the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens.
Despite it being well-documented that:
- These bills offer no protections against coercion of terminally ill people
- These bills further the health care and mental health care disparities faced by disabled people
- These bills treat terminally ill people fundamentally differently than the rest of society in denying them equal access to crisis intervention services
Nevertheless, the Maryland House of Delegates subcommittees have voted to make it legal for doctors to prescribe a lethal overdose to their patients.
The Disability Community is also disgusted by the fact that the Maryland House chose March 1, 2019, of all days, to advance this bill. March 1 is known as the National Disability Day of Mourning, the annual day on which we mourn the murder of the thousands of disabled people who have lost our lives at the hands of our caregivers.
“It is reprehensible that on the day that disabled people are mourning the murder of our people by parents and caregivers, the MD legislature advanced their assisted suicide bill,” said Anita Cameron, Director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet, a national organization that opposes physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia of disabled people. “Bills like this put our lives at risk because they are a form of discrimination that will allow doctors to determine whether our quality of life merits assistance in living, or assistance to die,” she said.
Crosby King, who coordinates for MD-ADAPT remarked that “this bill will only accelerate the deaths of people with disabilities at the hands of well meaning family members.”
Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, found this “a terrible irony that the Maryland assisted suicide bill was advanced on the national Disability Day of Mourning when events around the country honor elder and disabled lives lost to homicide by relatives and caregivers. Assisted suicide laws are immunity statutes that provide abusers a recipe for getting away with homicide.”
And so will this bill.
Maryland is better than this. Maryland should be spending its resources on helping us live our lives to our fullest. Maryland should kill this bill, not make it easier for people to kill us.