Disability Rights Advocates Gather at SJC to Defend Disabled Lives
Boston, MA – Thursday, October 13 at 12 PM, Second Thoughts MA: Disability Rights Advocates Against Assisted Suicide and Not Dead Yet will gather outside the Supreme Judicial Court at the John Adams Courthouse to remind the SJC and the public that the issue of assisted suicide belongs in the legislature, just as the Suffolk Superior Court recommended in its dismissal in Kligler vs. Mass.
Second Thoughts Director John B. Kelly said, “Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any state high court has found a constitutional right to assisted suicide. The prohibition against assisted suicide protects the lives of disabled people.”
Not Dead Yet Director of Minority Outreach Anita Cameron said, “Black people overwhelmingly oppose assisted suicide and don’t use it. As doctor assisted suicide laws become normalized across the country, racial disparities put Blacks at risk of denial of care and early death.”
Not Dead Yet Assistant Director Jules Good said, “After Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that assisted death is a fundamental right, legislation and more court decisions have led to the euthanizing of disabled people who lack care, safe housing, and social supports. The Court must not legalize a practice that further endangers people who are already vulnerable.”
Second Thoughts member Ellen Leigh said, “I supported assisted suicide until I learned that it is all about disability – the top five reasons in Oregon involve depending on others, feeling like a burden, and shame – ‘loss of dignity.’ We all have inherent dignity and do not lose that when we become ill and disabled. Bringing ‘dignity’ into this only increases feelings of shame and burden for choosing to live.”
Speakers will show:
Assisted suicide, as leading proponent bioethicist Thaddeus Pope conceded, “is all about disability.”
Well-educated upper class white people are the drivers of assisted suicide. Marginalized people in MA and across the US oppose assisted suicide, and legalizing it ignores our perspectives and needs.
Palliative care, including palliative sedation when necessary, is already legal to relieve pain and other suffering in a way that does not pose such a risk to vulnerable people. Assisted suicide isn’t needed.
WHEN: Thursday, October 13, 12 PM-1 PM WHERE: 1 Pemberton Square, outside the John Adams Courthouse, intersection of Somerset Street and Ashburton Place.
Second Thoughts MA organized in 2012 to contest the 2012 Ballot Question 2 for the legalization of assisted suicide, which we helped defeat. We have successfully lobbied against every assisted suicide bill since.
Not Dead Yet is the leading national disability organization opposing assisted suicide laws, futility judgments, and “better dead than disabled” policies. The group organized in 1996 to help stop Kevorkian, whose victims were overwhelmingly disabled and not terminal.
Most excellent