On Wednesday, November 18, disability activists from Second Thoughts Connecticut as well as members of Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide participated in a press conference held by a broad alliance of assisted suicide opponents. The media event was held in response to a previous press conference conducted by assisted suicide proponents the same day.
Head and shoulders photo of Cathy Ludlum, a woman in mid 50s with glasses and wheelchair headrest.
Below are excerpts about and quotes from disability advocates, many of them featuring Second Thoughts CT leader Cathy Ludlum:
Opponents also held a press conference in the Legislative Office Building, where they called on legislators to reject the bill. Instead, they said the legislature should focus on improving hospice care.
Cathy Ludlum, a disability rights advocate with spinal muscular atrophy, said many of the concerns often cited in end-of-life debates stem from issues that some people with disabilities live with every day, like loss of autonomy or loss of dignity.
“Supporters often say each person is just one bad death away from becoming a proponent. I say if you had to fight for preventative care, aggressive treatment and sometimes for your life in the health care system the way we do, you might well come to our side instead,” Ludlum said. “The push for assisted suicide is not about pain. It’s about loss. It’s about fear of disability.”
…Others say the bill would have a negative impact on people with disabilities.
Nancy Alisberg, a disability rights lawyer at the time, was representing a 14-year-old boy who developed a severe form of leukemia. The boy also had an intellectual disability.
She says the doctors didn’t want to treat him as they thought he wouldn’t understand why he was suffering from the chemotherapy and that treatment would impair what residual intellectual capacity he had.
“What this incident showed me was that his life, as a person with an intellectual disability, was not worth living,” said Alisberg. “I feel that the laws on assisted suicide do not protect people with disabilities, and that they are going to be put into positions where they are being made to feel that they are an onus to their family, an onus to society, and they might as well just commit suicide. For that reason, I came to oppose physician-assisted suicide.” …
In a dueling press conference, opponents from the Connecticut Alliance Against Assisted Suicide also spoke out. They say the change in the law could create a threat to people with disabilities who could be taken advantage of for their estates….
….Opponents from the Connecticut Alliance Against Assisted Suicide say the lethal cocktail has not been tested.
“These drugs are being used outside of the scope and are experimental at best,” said Dr. Rebecca Henderson, End of Life Care.
They add lawmakers should focus on palliative care and hospice care.
“The push for assisted suicide is not about pain,” said Cathy Ludlow, Advocate for Disabled. “It’s about loss. It’s about fear of disability.”
Critics of the aid-in-dying — which include religious organizations and disability rights groups — have argued that even with robust protections, aid-in-dying laws in other jurisdictions have inevitably led to abuses and expansions to include patients who have not been diagnosed with terminal diseases.
“The ostensible safeguards in the legislation here in Connecticut are now called barriers in other states including Oregon and Washington, and are being removed through legislation and the court process,” said Cathy Ludlum, a disability rights advocate from Manchester.
DISABILITY RIGHTS ACTIVIST Cathy Ludlum and other opponents from the Connecticut Alliance Against Assisted Suicide spoke out against establishing a process for terminally ill patients in Connecticut to legally access life-ending medications.
“Once again, assisted suicide is bad medicine. It is bad public policy and it is bad for people,” said Ludlum, a leader of Second Thoughts Connecticut, grassroots group of disabled people and allies that opposes an end-of-life option.
“The push for assisted suicide is not about pain,” said Cathy Ludlum with Second Thoughts Connecticut, which has fought the legislation for years. “It’s about loss; it’s about fear of disability.”
“Assisted suicide cannot and will not stay limited to a select population,” said Cathy Ludlum, a disabilities rights advocate and staunch opponent of medically assisted suicide.
Ludlum said the eventual elimination of safeguards and expansion of medically assisted suicide is inevitable once legislation legalizes the practice. She called the proposed bill “bad medicine, bad public policy, and bad for people.”
“Supporters often say, ‘Each person is just one bad death away from becoming a proponent.’ I say, ‘If you had to fight for preventative care, aggressive treatment, and sometimes for your life in the health care system the way we do, you would likely join us on the opposing side,’” Ludlum said. “The push for assisted suicide is not about pain, it’s about loss. It’s about fear of disability.”
But many of the people present at the Capitol were disability advocates who feared that the bill would become a tool for a healthcare system that did not want to pay for costly treatment for disabled individuals.
“Assisted suicide cannot and will not stay limited to a select population. The ostensible safeguards in legislation here in Connecticut are now called barriers in other states, including Oregon and Washington, and are being removed through legislation or the court process,” said Cathy Ludlum, a resident of Manchester and a leader of a group of disabled individuals who are against the legislation.
Somers also referenced Canada, which has come under scrutiny for potential abuses of euthanasia.
“The question is how many struggling people will follow their lead, pressured by society and assisted by the health-care system to die,” Cathy Ludlum, of Second Thoughts Connecticut – a grassroots organization that opposes assisted suicide – said during a legislative hearing last year.
2 thoughts on “CT Disability Activists Garner Amazing Amount of Coverage From Dueling Press Conferences”
Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide members were there on Wednesday the 18th, with signs around our necks identifying our group, and flyers we passed out. We had a couple of good, generally respectful, conversations with proponents.
Although in one or two instances the press did show us standing with our signs (at the Alliance press conference, where Rep. Cheeseman acknowledged our presence, and at the Public Health Committee meeting) the media is still largely trying to paint this as a struggle between proponents and the religious right. But we are making some inroads and chipping away at that false depiction.
I had this letter in The Boston Globe in January 9:
I think “Assisted suicide’s slippery slope” is spot-on. In fact, I think its argument doesn’t go far enough. Independent of the slippery slope, legalizing physician-assisted suicide only for the terminally ill is inherently discriminatory because it protects some competent adults, but not others, from their own suicidal desires. The law should value all human lives equally by legalizing physician-assisted suicide either for all competent adults or for no one.
Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide members were there on Wednesday the 18th, with signs around our necks identifying our group, and flyers we passed out. We had a couple of good, generally respectful, conversations with proponents.
Although in one or two instances the press did show us standing with our signs (at the Alliance press conference, where Rep. Cheeseman acknowledged our presence, and at the Public Health Committee meeting) the media is still largely trying to paint this as a struggle between proponents and the religious right. But we are making some inroads and chipping away at that false depiction.
I had this letter in The Boston Globe in January 9:
I think “Assisted suicide’s slippery slope” is spot-on. In fact, I think its argument doesn’t go far enough. Independent of the slippery slope, legalizing physician-assisted suicide only for the terminally ill is inherently discriminatory because it protects some competent adults, but not others, from their own suicidal desires. The law should value all human lives equally by legalizing physician-assisted suicide either for all competent adults or for no one.
Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Providence