Two weeks ago I went to the ER in extreme pain. Normally, I live with level ten pain. I’ve gotten used to it. In a flare, I’ve learned not to moan or cry out.
But this pain, which started out as a small annoyance, spread and went down my spine, then, into my chest and abdomen, became unbearable. I had to go to the ER.
I’m usually treated as a drug seeker when I go in, even though I’m allergic to all opioids and opiates. But blood tests showed cardiac enzymes in my blood and they admitted me.
While in hospital, I experienced a frightening event. My pain level was so high that it caused my blood pressure to skyrocket to 240/120. The pain was so bad that it was literally putting stress on my heart and my heart was about to give out. There were at least 10 doctors and nurses in the room, working to get my pain level, and thus, my blood pressure, down. In desperation, doctors decided to give me Dilaudid, a medication that I am allergic to, and Benadryl, than risk me having a heart attack.
I didn’t realize pain could do that to one’s body.
Even with the unrelenting pain that I have been going through, I still don’t want to die. I want my doctors to think outside the box, as they did that day. They tried other pain meds, which did nothing, then, made the decision to give me a pain medicine that I’m allergic to because they could deal with the allergic reaction; they could not deal with me having a heart attack.
If people are afraid of dying in pain, why not fight for better access to pain management and palliative care so that this won’t happen? This tells me that it’s not about dying in pain, it’s about the right to die, itself, and the proponents are so into themselves that they cannot recognize that assisted suicide laws put people in danger. The right to die becomes the duty to die, especially if you are from a marginalized community.
Now, having experienced pain that can take my life, I’m on a mission to keep that pain at bay. But, in doing so, I’m exposing myself to the racist practices of pain clinics that refuse to prescribe opioid and opiates to their patients. Black women, especially, are not given correct amounts of effective pain medications to manage our pain. I asked my doctor to indicate in my records that I live with pain, and what happened when the pain got too bad. It was explained to me that until I’m assigned a doctor, no one will see that information, meaning that as usual, because I’m Black, I’ll be treated as a drug seeker even though I’m allergic to almost everything.
Why do assisted suicide proponents fight for assisted suicide while saying that they support palliative care and pain management? Because once again, it’s not about pain or the fear of it. It about the right to die. They use fear of pain as the catch, to bring you in because nobody wants to die in pain, but it’s really about them not wanting to be disabled because they feel that is undignified. They don’t want to live the life of being disabled, so they use pain as an excuse to push their right to die agenda.
Even as I was going through this incredible pain, I wasn’t thinking, “let me die”. I was thinking, “stop this pain so I don’t die”! I was literally thinking, “I don’t want assisted suicide, I want pain-free, or at least, manageable pain that can be addressed.”
When whole communities of marginalized people aren’t getting the healthcare we need, access to pain treatment that isn’t steeped in racism, and cardiac, diabetes, cancer and other treatments that aren’t steeped in racism, how can you support assisted suicide?
As this is normalized, meaning more and more states pass assisted suicide laws, we’re going to see a frightening trend of marginalized people requesting assisted suicide because they were “convinced” that it’s a good thing by family members or doctors.
As long as there are marginalized communities who deal with healthcare disparities, there is no place for assisted suicide anywhere in this country.
The problem of pressure arises with hospice as well, with disabled people being pressured to die “naturally” rather than have their lives “artificially” prolonged by “heroic” treatment. Of course hospice evangelists don’t object to having indoor light “artificially” prolonged by electricity.
“As long as there are marginalized communities who deal with healthcare disparities, there is no place for assisted suicide anywhere in this country.”
I agree with ninety percent of what you say, but I find this conclusion troublesome. And the reason is: because the argument is so easy for our adversaries to ignore.
They will say that we cannot make the exercise of personal liberty dependant upon the prior attainment of a perfect society. And they will follow that up, specifically, by stating that it is particularly immoral, in the case of a person deprived of many good things (for whatever systemic reason) to be also deprived of this good thing that is Medical Aid in Dying.
So even though I know it is tempting to attempt to find common ground with our tormentors this particular angle is a poison pill.
In France, these larger political divides are even more fundamentally entrenched than they are here. In that country, there was a recent euthanasia legalization bill that died in process because the government fell. Believe it or not, the disabled intellectuals would not even talk about assisted death during the election, because just like here, the disabled are mostly progressive. Their logic at the time, was that a right wing government would be worse, all around, than legal euthanasia.
In other words, not content with being thrown under the bus, they will defend (under threat of death) the people who threw them (us) there!
The worse case was one very influential disabled author who actually called euthanasia “social progress” saying that if the systemic disparities did not exist, the right to choose death would be self-evident. BUT (unfortunately) in the present conditions that it would not be safe.
To be clear: there is no way we can win with an attitude like that. Much more important is your adamant declaration that you wish to live. That is the default position for human beings. We all, very nearly, wish to live. Even with maximum marketing (Netherlands, Canada) and even in the very worst categories (terminal cancer) the consent rate to euthanasia never rises above 10%.
Objectively considered, there is absolutely no natural market for euthanasia. And as for convincing us to go there anyways: being disabled certainly doesn’t tip the scale. In fact, since Canada opened the criteria to allow viable patients to die by euthanasia, only three point five percent of MAID recipients were not actually dying.
Moreover, with regards to race and socio-economic factors: it still comes to most people as a big surprise that even after many years, it is still the white and wealthy who are over-represented.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe it is true that euthanasia will be maximized to kill as many economically embarrassing persons as possible. But the vast majority will never consent. Actually the worst outlook is on the side of those incapable of consent. I truly believe that assisted death as a medical treatment, pursued in exactly the same manner as any other treatment, will soon be used (through standard modalities of substituted consent for other life-critical procedures) to eliminate most of the incapable population. Most of even our present contingent of anti-euthanasia activists do not yet take that prospect seriously, but I do believe that the fix is already in.
However people (left, right, progressive, conservative, black, white… you get the idea) do not necessarily care about others. They care about their own sorry little selves. It is therefore best, in my opinion, to concentrate on revealing to the typical AB and (it is merely to reveal the statistical truth) that when push comes to shove, they too will wish to live. And at that time, it will be better for them to deal with doctors who do not believe they should be dead.
In any case, thank you for all you do in this fight Anita. Any argument is better than no argument. And if there are even a tiny number of progressives who can be swayed on the basis of some other progressive doctrine, then that tiny number may be enough to put us over the top.
I just got through telling 2 different people about doctor John diamond, the famous Australian psychiatrist RIP, who said that he did not want to treat anyone who did not want to live. He said he only wanted to treat people who really wanted to live. We are accelerating the culture of Death around the world. I wonder if it’s because we sense that our numbers of human beings are so overpopulated. That maybe this is why we find in France, Belgium and Germany right now in 2024, the extreme right with some folks being interviewed as saying about the migrants – “Let them go to the gas chambers!”
During Victorian times there were one billion of us human beings. In my lifetime, (I was born in 1961) and the year that I was 7 or 8 we had 3 to 3 and a 1/2 billion human beings. And now some 60 odd years later we have 7 and a 1/2 billion human beings. And we’re creeping up to 8 billion!. I believe they say by the year 2050 (only 26 years from now), we will have 9 billion human beings on the planet of Earth.
In addition, speaking of procedures set to be withheld but essential to keep life going. My brother laid dying in a hospital in 1981. He was in a coma after a bicycle accident there was a big court case in Florida, and they were fighting it out. The doctors wanted to remove his life support and his organs. One social workers stood alone as against this idea, and ultimately he died before they could remove his organs. How they felt they could do so was because at the time, my brother Chris was a missing person for 4 years. He had no family that they knew of, the doctors, and so they felt they could take his organs with impunity! Nowadays, there wouldn’t even be a court case. All it would be (if that) is a quick sweep through the ethics committee just to say they had crossed all their t’s and dotted all their i’s. Now, with that kind of greed I took off my Driver’s license, the ability to take my organs.
You are absolutely right. I have A phd and cerebral palsy and people either think my life has no joy, or i get a blank government check.
The problem of pressure arises with hospice as well, with disabled people being pressured to die “naturally” rather than have their lives “artificially” prolonged by “heroic” treatment. Of course hospice evangelists don’t object to having indoor light “artificially” prolonged by electricity.
THANK YOU for Sharing!!! I agree wholeheartedly with you!!!
Hi Anita,
“As long as there are marginalized communities who deal with healthcare disparities, there is no place for assisted suicide anywhere in this country.”
I agree with ninety percent of what you say, but I find this conclusion troublesome. And the reason is: because the argument is so easy for our adversaries to ignore.
They will say that we cannot make the exercise of personal liberty dependant upon the prior attainment of a perfect society. And they will follow that up, specifically, by stating that it is particularly immoral, in the case of a person deprived of many good things (for whatever systemic reason) to be also deprived of this good thing that is Medical Aid in Dying.
So even though I know it is tempting to attempt to find common ground with our tormentors this particular angle is a poison pill.
In France, these larger political divides are even more fundamentally entrenched than they are here. In that country, there was a recent euthanasia legalization bill that died in process because the government fell. Believe it or not, the disabled intellectuals would not even talk about assisted death during the election, because just like here, the disabled are mostly progressive. Their logic at the time, was that a right wing government would be worse, all around, than legal euthanasia.
In other words, not content with being thrown under the bus, they will defend (under threat of death) the people who threw them (us) there!
The worse case was one very influential disabled author who actually called euthanasia “social progress” saying that if the systemic disparities did not exist, the right to choose death would be self-evident. BUT (unfortunately) in the present conditions that it would not be safe.
To be clear: there is no way we can win with an attitude like that. Much more important is your adamant declaration that you wish to live. That is the default position for human beings. We all, very nearly, wish to live. Even with maximum marketing (Netherlands, Canada) and even in the very worst categories (terminal cancer) the consent rate to euthanasia never rises above 10%.
Objectively considered, there is absolutely no natural market for euthanasia. And as for convincing us to go there anyways: being disabled certainly doesn’t tip the scale. In fact, since Canada opened the criteria to allow viable patients to die by euthanasia, only three point five percent of MAID recipients were not actually dying.
Moreover, with regards to race and socio-economic factors: it still comes to most people as a big surprise that even after many years, it is still the white and wealthy who are over-represented.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe it is true that euthanasia will be maximized to kill as many economically embarrassing persons as possible. But the vast majority will never consent. Actually the worst outlook is on the side of those incapable of consent. I truly believe that assisted death as a medical treatment, pursued in exactly the same manner as any other treatment, will soon be used (through standard modalities of substituted consent for other life-critical procedures) to eliminate most of the incapable population. Most of even our present contingent of anti-euthanasia activists do not yet take that prospect seriously, but I do believe that the fix is already in.
However people (left, right, progressive, conservative, black, white… you get the idea) do not necessarily care about others. They care about their own sorry little selves. It is therefore best, in my opinion, to concentrate on revealing to the typical AB and (it is merely to reveal the statistical truth) that when push comes to shove, they too will wish to live. And at that time, it will be better for them to deal with doctors who do not believe they should be dead.
In any case, thank you for all you do in this fight Anita. Any argument is better than no argument. And if there are even a tiny number of progressives who can be swayed on the basis of some other progressive doctrine, then that tiny number may be enough to put us over the top.
Best Regards,
Gordon Friesen, Montreal
I just got through telling 2 different people about doctor John diamond, the famous Australian psychiatrist RIP, who said that he did not want to treat anyone who did not want to live. He said he only wanted to treat people who really wanted to live. We are accelerating the culture of Death around the world. I wonder if it’s because we sense that our numbers of human beings are so overpopulated. That maybe this is why we find in France, Belgium and Germany right now in 2024, the extreme right with some folks being interviewed as saying about the migrants – “Let them go to the gas chambers!”
During Victorian times there were one billion of us human beings. In my lifetime, (I was born in 1961) and the year that I was 7 or 8 we had 3 to 3 and a 1/2 billion human beings. And now some 60 odd years later we have 7 and a 1/2 billion human beings. And we’re creeping up to 8 billion!. I believe they say by the year 2050 (only 26 years from now), we will have 9 billion human beings on the planet of Earth.
In addition, speaking of procedures set to be withheld but essential to keep life going. My brother laid dying in a hospital in 1981. He was in a coma after a bicycle accident there was a big court case in Florida, and they were fighting it out. The doctors wanted to remove his life support and his organs. One social workers stood alone as against this idea, and ultimately he died before they could remove his organs. How they felt they could do so was because at the time, my brother Chris was a missing person for 4 years. He had no family that they knew of, the doctors, and so they felt they could take his organs with impunity! Nowadays, there wouldn’t even be a court case. All it would be (if that) is a quick sweep through the ethics committee just to say they had crossed all their t’s and dotted all their i’s. Now, with that kind of greed I took off my Driver’s license, the ability to take my organs.