NDY’s Director of Minority Outreach Anita Cameron was interviewed on The Laura Flanders Show, a news and public affairs show on PBS. In this clip, Anita discusses the dangers of assisted suicide and the CA court case in which NDY is a plaintiff.
Transcript
Anita Cameron: The real danger to people with disabilities now is this doctor-assisted suicide, assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide, medical aid, or whatever you wanna call it. That is what presents a danger to disabled people and other marginalized communities.
Laura Flanders: Your organization, Not Dead Yet, is currently a plaintiff in a case in California involving what you just mentioned. Why, and what’s your argument?
Anita: Our argument is that assisted suicide in this case is like I say, in California, so it’s referring to a California case, but I certainly feel it in a global way, that assisted suicide laws violate the Americans with Disabilities Act because it sets up a two-tiered system, it’s inherently discriminatory.
Laura: For people that aren’t familiar with the language of the text, can you just explain what you mean?
Anita: So, assisted suicide is supposed to be for people who are terminal, with six months or less to live. Doctors often make mistakes about that. Then what ends up happening is you get your terminal diagnosis. Remember, terminal people are a subset of the disability community, you know what I mean? So people with terminal conditions who even themselves may not consider themselves disabled, are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act because usually when you’re terminal, you are needing help with three or more activities of daily living, and so they’re protected. There was a study in 2021, a Harvard study, a survey if you will, that showed that about 82% of the doctors that they surveyed felt that people with disabilities had a lower quality of life or lesser quality of life than non-disabled people. And so what happens is you combine that with the doctor’s biases, disability discrimination that happens, a doctor’s gonna be more apt to write you out or maybe even try to convince you that this is a good thing. Because if you’re given terminal diagnosis, it’s gonna be normal to be depressed, and so what do you do? You get mental health treatment. People with disabilities, we already have limited access to that. And then when you rationalize this, people think, oh, well it’s normal that you would be depressed because of your disability. We have this better dead than disabled fate.
