Last week was a significant one in Connecticut. On March 20, the Public Health Committee of the Connecticut legislature held a hearing on H.B. 6645, which would legalize assisted suicide in that state. NDY board member and Director of Second Thoughts Massachusetts John Kelly testified in opposition to the bill. Here’s a link to the press release that gives more info on the hearing and Kelly’s testimony.
In addition to Kelly, other disability activists were on hand, as evidenced in the links, videos, and pictures below:
Connecticut Post: General Assembly mulls state-sanctioned suicide:
HARTFORD — The General Assembly is considering the difficult question of whether a dying person should be allowed to legally take his or her own life with the help of a doctor.
The Legislature’s Public Health Committee on Wednesday listened to hours of testimony — mostly in opposition — to a bill that would allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.
“This is a ticket to murder,” said John Kelly, director of Second Thoughts, a Massachusetts group that last year helped defeat a similar law in the Bay State.
“This amounts to a government recommendation that sometimes death is the best answer. Doctors make mistakes. Under this bill, a diagnosis can become deadly,” Kelly said.
Elaine Kolb singing, playing guitar and talking; Connecticut disability activist Cathy Ludlum to her right.
My thanks to everyone who worked so hard to be there to let the legislature hear about our opposition to the bill. My apologies for taking this long to put up a blog post about it. If anyone has other links, wants to give names to some of the other people in the videos, etc. – please just write me and I’ll edit the additional info in.
More links:
CT Mirror: http://www.ctmirror.org/story/19490/end-life-bill-brings-comfort-some-fears-vulnerability-others Fair and balanced, yet the comparison Arielle Levin Becker makes between Sara Myers and Cathy Ludlum is highly revealing (note my comment below the story).
New Haven Register (my heads-up e-mailing got us this one, after an earlier story falsely claimed that HB 6645 was full of safeguards): http://nhregister.com/articles/2013/03/19/news/doc51491e71b3e4e463179788.txt HB 6645 as currently written has no waiting period and only one doctor if the “terminal illness” is deemed “sufficiently advanced,” meaning that someone can get a terminal diagnosis, pick up the lethal medication, and be dead within hours.
WTNH-TV Channel 8: http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/politics/weighing-in-on-assisted-suicide#.UVAfWDcsDRp
CT News Junkie: http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/right-to-die_or_assisted_suicide/
Picture from Second Thoughts Connecticut press conference, on the website of Senator Joe Markley: http://farm9.static.flickr.com/8509/8574564003_4797be77d7_b.jpg (I am standing on the left, and next to Cathy in the second video above)
Testimony on the bill: http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/CommDocTmyBillAllComm.asp?bill=HB-06645&doc_year=2013
Video of 15-hour hearing: http://www.ctn.state.ct.us/CTNplayer.asp?odID=8816 John Kelly’s excellent testimony is at just past clip position 2:00; Professor Stephen Mikochik (must see) followed by Claude Holcomb at 5:22; Stephen Mendelsohn at roughly 11:48
The Connecticut media focused heavily on the disability angle. We still face George Soros’ money and Betty Gallo’s lobbying, but we hopefully changed the terms of the debate. One of the senators co-sponsoring the bill could not say what the lethal drug was, thought it was potassium, but nevertheless claimed it was 100% effective. Members of the Public Health Committee: Got second thoughts?
I’m going to post this comment and then cut and paste the whole thing as a new blog entry – giving you the credit for listing, writing and compiling this list. Thanks!
Thank you for coming to our state to testify. I tried to submit my own testimony about things that happened to my son as a baby but I do not see it on the gov website as of today, April 1st.
Sincerely,
Holly Opalenik