A June 30th Washington, D.C. news story, Medical aid in dying: States debate right-to-die laws, included a photo from a Not Dead Yet protest held at a press conference held by assisted suicide proponents which was covered in this blog in early May (Disability Activists Crash Pro-Assisted Suicide Press Conference). Though giving more space and first prominence to proponents, the June 30th article includes opponents in video interviews, photos and substantial quotes. Below are the quotes and protest photo, but for the full article go HERE.
‘More harm than good’: The case against physician-assisted suicide
Aaron Baier with NDY T-shirt and Protest Sign
Aaron Baier, director of administration for the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley (photo credit: Julie Farrar)
If someone is diagnosed with cancer, but declines chemotherapy, should a doctor help them die? Should people suffering from mental illness like anorexia nervosa be able to end their lives with a prescription?
It’s questions like these that fuel opposition to physician-assisted dying, or what some opponents call “assisted suicide.”
“They grant broad immunities to doctors and others involved,” said Diane Coleman, a disability advocate who founded the organization Not Dead Yet in 1996 to oppose physician-assisted suicide. “The only real data is reported by the prescribing doctor; there’s no meaningful oversight.”
The American Medical Association has debated the issue in recent years and hasn’t changed its stance: that ultimately, physician-assisted death does more harm than good.
“That six months or less is a prognosis,” said Matt Vallière, executive director of the Patients Rights Action Fund, a nonpartisan, secular organization opposed to physician-assisted suicide. “It’s a best guess by physicians, and those physicians will readily admit that it’s not a hard and fast thing. They’re not very good at prognostication.”
Vallière began lobbying against aid-in-dying laws in 2012, when his home state of Massachusetts put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide. Polls leading up to the vote showed 70% approval, Vallière said, but on election day the measure failed in a 51%-49% vote.
“This makes suicide a medical treatment,” he said. “It’s coded by your doctor, your insurance company. Your doctor, your pharmacist and your insurance are now involved. In some cases your insurer will pay for this, while denying you coverage for other things.”
The lack of oversight could lead to tired and overworked caregivers giving patients the medication against their will, Vallière said. He said it also allows doctors to skirt requirements without consequence.
“You have to be competent at the time of request, not the time of ingestion. Not a single one of them has a requirement that a third party be present at the time of ingestion to ensure competence and that it’s voluntary,” Vallière said.
Coleman, of Not Dead Yet, has a form of muscular dystrophy and has been in a motorized wheelchair since she was 11 years old. She’s had breathing support for the past 20 years and still works fulltime.
“People’s reasons for assisted suicide are disability issues — a loss of autonomy, the stress of not being able to do the same things, feeling like a burden of others. Those are the kinds of concerns that we understand very well,” Coleman said.
Coleman started her organization in 1996, the same year Dr. Jack Kevorkian was acquitted on criminal charges that he helped two women kill themselves in Michigan. It’s also the same year physician-assisted death was going before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Coleman and other disability advocates warn aid-in-dying laws can lead to unintended, life-or-death consequences that “set up a change, a set of expectations in society and in a health care system that already sees people like me as a bit too expensive.”
“We face a lot of difficulty in getting the services we need just to get up in the morning … Whatever we need, it’s a struggle still,” she said. “The answer is to provide the supports we need, not to kill us.”
