March 16, 2016 Dear Committee Members: I am writing on behalf of Not Dead Yet, a national disability organization with members in Minnesota, to urge you to vote against the Minnesota assisted suicide bill. It’s frustrating to see the assisted suicide issue portrayed as a progressive social cause. By the time disability rights activists entered the public debate on the issue over 20 years ago, well-funded assisted suicide proponents had already…
It’s been awhile since we’ve written about the Final Exit Network (FEN), but there are new developments in the criminal case against members of the group. You can read earlier posts on the case in Minnesota here, here, here and here. Here’s an excerpt from a summary on NPR on the Frontline site (Frontline producers are big fans of FEN): A Minnesota judge has ruled that part of the state’s law against assisted suicide is…
Good news! Following intervention by attorneys, the Minnesota hospital that we previously reported had planned to stop providing oxygen to a woman with lung cancer decided to follow her wishes to continue treatment. This goes to show, as so many people with disabilities have experienced, that when there’s a power imbalance operating against you, get legal/advocate help to tip the scales and, hopefully, secure compliance with the law….
From the Baltimore Sun: HASTINGS, Minn. — A Minnesota grand jury has indicted a national right-to-die group and several members for their actions in the 2007 suicide of a suburban Minneapolis woman, prosecutors announced Monday. The 17-count indictment charges the medical director of Final Exit Network, Lawrence Egbert of Baltimore, and three other officials with felony counts of assisting suicide and interference with a death scene, a gross…
From the Telegraph-Herald: MINNEAPOLIS — Members of a national right-to-die group are challenging Minnesota’s assisted-suicide law, saying it violates constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association. The group Final Exit Network is challenging the law after four of its members were indicted in May in the suicide of a Minnesota woman. Prosecutors say the defendants not only supported Doreen Dunn’s decision…
