Against New Jersey’s “Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill” Act, S-1072
Good afternoon; my name is Dawn Parkot and I am the Founder and President of the Climb Organization. One of our aspirations is to educate the world on disabled life issues.
The disability rights community is rightly concerned about the potential for abuse in the bill S-1072. While those who wrote and modified this legislation point to the alleged safeguards against its abuse, there is no way they can assure that the safeguards will be observed. There is no real means of assuring that those who participate in the process follow all the provisions.
- This legislation allows for the involvement of third parties in the request for lethal drugs. In Section 3 (Definitions), “capable” means having the capacity to make health care decisions and to communicate them to a health care provider, including communication through persons familiar with the patient’s manner of communicating – if those persons are available. Simply put, the legislation makes it possible for someone to speak on behalf of the adult requesting assisted suicide, if they are familiar with the patient’s manner of communicating. This poses a serious threat to anybody with a significant speech disability who may be denied access to their communication device. A third party speaking for such a person could successfully end their life.
- The legislation contains no standards that apply at the time the lethal dose is ingested, and the reports contain nothing to address the concern that a third party, such as an heir or caregiver, could administer the drugs without the individual’s consent. Federal authorities estimate that one in ten elders and disabled are abused, most often by family and caregivers. Someone else can put the pills in the patient’s mouth. Someone else could put the drug in a feeding tube or I.V bag. There is no independent witness required at the time of ingestion, so who would know? The mere presence of a lethal drug request would provide an alibi. The patient’s control over the “time, place and manner” of his or her death, isn’t guaranteed.
- Unbearable end of life physical pain is not the issue though it is often cited as the reason for having bills like this one. Strong medical evidence from both hospice providers and world-renowned oncologists, as well as data out of Oregon, have shredded that argument. There is no reason for anyone to suffer unbearable pain at the end of life with all of the pain-management tools we have at our disposal today. Instead, we know from the Oregon data that those seeking assisted suicide mostly cite feelings of being a burden on family and not being able to live life fully as the reasons they want to end their lives. Clearly, fear of disability is the significant factor in these decisions.
Realizing that disability issues are most often the real concern, we should focus our attention on addressing those issues in our world and with our public policy. We should answer fear about a being a burden with better home care solutions. These are the real answers, not the dangerous public policy of assisted suicide. – Thank you.