Diane Coleman, John Kelly and Marilyn Golden Quoted in U.S. News & World Report Article on “Right to Die”

Today, March 24th, the U.S. News & World Report site published an article titled “Is There a Right to Die?”

The article focuses mainly on the current battle around assisted suicide legislation in Connecticut.

The most remarkable aspect of this article is that about half of it is devoted to quotes from disability activists, who are the only opponents to legalized assisted suicide quoted in the article.  Marilyn Golden from DREDF is quoted as are Diane Coleman and John Kelly from Not Dead Yet.  I (Stephen Drake) was also interviewed but not quoted.

We celebrate and appreciate that.  Still, there are aspects regarding the framing of the story that may make readers wonder why disability activists were relevant to it.

First, the graphic used under the headline is a picture of a latex-gloved hand pulling a plug, which conflates the right to refuse unwanted treatment with assisted suicide.  The public is already confused, and Compassion & Choices capitalizes on that in its lobbying.  (Connecticut and New Jersey have bills pending; bills in New Hampshire and Massachusetts were recently defeated.)

Second, the reporter focuses on Compassion & Choices’ (C&C) claim that assisted suicide is only for terminally ill and imminently dying people.  She heard from us about the New Hampshire bill, which made people eligible for assisted suicide if they have an irreversible condition which will shorten their life span, thus making many people with disabilities eligible, as it is not tied to a prognosis of death in six months.  We also told the reporter about C&C’s campaign to promote voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) as a means of suicide for those who don’t have or qualify for an assisted suicide law in their state, including people who are not terminal.  But the article doesn’t bring up these facts that show how broad C&C’s agenda is.

That might have been too hard to put up against the C & C claim that their legal objectives are narrow – and would have required a longer article than the reporter’s editors wanted.

Bottom line – I suspect that Barbara Coombs Lee is far less happy with this article than we are.  I’m sure she would much rather have not had us included and been able to pretend that religious conservatives are her group’s only legislative opponents.

Please go check out the article here.