Oral Talking Points
- Committee Chair Alexander and Esteemed Council Members – Thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony.
- I’m Anne Sommers and am the Chairwoman of Not Dead Yet, a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes the legalization of assisted suicide as a deadly form of discrimination against old, ill, and disabled people.
- Our broad base of supporters includes people with a wide variety of disabilities, many who use ventilators and daily experience impairments that proponents describe as the reason we need the bill. Many of whom have been told by confident and well-intending doctors that they would not live to see another birthday. And years, if not decades later, we’re not dead yet, just like our name, and we know that we’re the real experts on the front lines of the health care system that serves (and, sadly, often underserves) dying people.
- Although people with disabilities aren’t usually terminally ill, the terminally ill are almost always disabled. And that is why we’re here testifying today in strong opposition to “The Death with Dignity Act of 2015.”
- In order to have an honest conversation about these topics, we must start by confronting head-on the myths that surround bills like this one. I have detailed five pervasive myths in my written testimony, which include:
- The myth that this bill is a public policy response to intractable pain;
- The myth that this bill provides dignity and control to people who are suffering;
- The myth that this bill is only for those who are terminally ill;
- The myth that this bill has adequate safeguards against abuse; and
- The myth that this bill is not an affront to people with disabilities
- Because of my limited time today, I will focus on abuse and coercion.
- It is a myth to say this bill has adequate safeguards against abuse.
- Depressed people will be harmed by this bill. Oregon’s statistics for the last five years show that barely 2% of patients were referred for a psychological evaluation, so the notion that this bill’s provisions will yield any better results in that respect is unfounded.
- I’ve had my primary care physician doctor for over 25 years. He knows me well. But we’re not talking about doctors who know their patients. The median length of the doctor-patient relationship in Oregon is 13 weeks. The range is 0-19 weeks.
- Understand this important distinction — Depressed suicidal people without a terminal disability diagnosis receive suicide prevention services, but under this bill, depressed suicidal people with a terminal disability diagnosis do not.
- And if one doctor declines to approve the lethal prescription, families can simply go “doctor shopping,” circumventing the bill’s purported safeguards. Instances of this practice are well-documented and in Oregon, it is common knowledge that the main organization that supports assisted suicide, which is well-represented here today – Compassion and Choices (formerly known as the Hemlock Society) – will gladly refer someone to assisted-suicide-friendly doctors.
- The vast majority of doctors who prescribe the lethal prescriptions in Oregon are Compassion and Choices referrals. So if the idea is that individual doctors provide safeguards, doctor shopping renders those safeguards void and essentially leaves assisted suicide on demand.
- An earlier witness claimed he has reams of data to defend the Oregon experience, and on the last panel, the “evidence from Oregon” was cited in support, but here are the problems with that.
- First, like in Oregon, this bill doesn’t grant the department of public health investigatory authority and resources, investigations of abuse or coercion are foreclosed. It all but ensures the record of this law will appear above reproach.
- Second, all reporting about doctor-assisted deaths is self-reported, which is sort of like asking drivers to let their home state know each year whether or not they ever rolled a stop sign or drove above the speed limit. This explains the absurd and disproven claim by proponents that there has been not one case of abuse in Oregon.
- In addition to the bill being ripe for abuse, it is an affront to people with disabilities.
- In two weeks, the nation will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, acknowledge the contributions and struggles of Americans with disabilities, and offer recommitment to its aims of ending disability discrimination.
- However, here we are today, on the virtual eve of this important anniversary of our beloved civil rights law, giving testimony about proposed legislation that would legalize disability discrimination in health care.
- Why is it disability discrimination? Because some people get suicide prevention and others get suicide assistance and the difference between the two groups is health and disability. The top 5 reasons for asking for the prescription in Oregon are about disability, not pain.
- This bill reinforces the very societal prejudice that disability rights laws were meant to dismantle and alters societal focus from respecting and accommodating people with disabilities to assisting them to die.
- B21-38 is an affront to the civil rights of people with disabilities. Reject it and the disability discrimination it promotes. Thank you.