MEDIA ADVISORY CONTACT
June 3, 2024 John Kelly 617-952-3302
Pamela Daly 617-543-7868
Disability Rights Advocates Opposing Assisted Suicide Available for Interviews
WHAT: Press availability of disability rights activists and allies in opposition to the assisted suicide bill S.1331, the “End of Life Options Act,” now before Senate Committee on Ways and Means.
WHERE: The Massachusetts Statehouse, Nurses Hall; 2nd floor.
WHEN: Wednesday June 5, 2024; starting at 10:30 am
WHO: Second Thoughts Massachusetts and allies (look for purple t-shirts and signs)
Compassion & Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) will also be hosting an event starting at 11 AM.
Second Thoughts Director John B. Kelly says, “Legalized assisted suicide is less about pain and more about fear of increasing disability and dependence on others. We support equal suicide prevention services, and yet individual suicide isn’t illegal. Our bottom line: keep your assisted suicide away from vulnerable people and our unequal and broken healthcare system.” John is commonly referred to as “paralyzed from the neck down,” which makes him eligible, in Canada and elsewhere, for lethal injection.
Second Thoughts member Pamela Daly says, “Bills like S.1331 have the potential to cause great harm to marginalized people like me and must not pass. Its safeguards are ridiculously easy to get around, and in other states that passed these bills, proponents soon got busy weakening them.”
Colin Killick, Executive Director of the Disability Policy Consortium (DPC), says: “Until we live in a world where free, high-quality health care and personal care assistants (PCA) services are available to everyone, where ableist stigma didn’t tell people with disabilities that their lives don’t have value, we must not pass this law.”
DPC Director of Advocacy Harry Weissman will attend and be available to speak with the media.
Kelly notes that all the leading national disability groups that have taken a position on assisted suicide, have come out against it.
In May, BBC One aired actor Liz Carr’s documentary, “Better off Dead?, which at last presents a disability perspective on assisted suicide. Just watch the first 7 minutes for a glimpse of the threats we face. Or search for “Liz Carr YouTube Better off Dead?”
Second Thoughts is a grassroots group of disability rights advocates from Massachusetts and the region which opposes the legalization of assisted suicide as a deadly form of discrimination against disabled people. We demand social justice against laws, policies, and media messages fueled by social bias. We organized in 2012 to help defeat assisted suicide Ballot Question 2. Since then, we have helped defeat 5 more bills in the legislature.
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