| For Immediate Release: January 13, 2020 | Contact: John B. Kelly, 617-952-3302; secondthoughtskelly@gmail.com; @2ndThoughtsMA |
Disability Rights Advocates Hail Mass Court’s Rejection of Assisted Suicide
Second Thoughts Massachusetts praises the decision by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Mary K. Ames rejecting a right to physician-assisted suicide in the state. She ruled that any Massachusetts doctor who prescribes a lethal dosage of drugs could be subject to prosecution for involuntary manslaughter.
Second Thoughts director John B. Kelly said, “we are gratified that the court reaffirmed the law against assisted suicide, and referred the matter to the legislature where lawmaking belongs. Disability rights advocates will continue to press the legislature that assisted suicide is just too dangerous.”
Judge Ames wrote that at the point of a patient ingesting the lethal drugs, they would be vulnerable to improper persuasion. “In such a situation, there is a greater risk that temporary anger, depression, a misunderstanding of one’s prognosis, ignorance of alternatives, financial considerations, strain on family members or significant others, or improper persuasion may impact the decision.”
Ruthie Poole is president of the board of MPOWER, a group of people with lived experience of mental health diagnosis, trauma, and addiction. Poole said, “Personally, as someone who has been suicidal in the past, I can relate to the desire for ‘a painless and easy way out.’ However, depression is treatable and reversible. Suicide is not. The current bill in the legislature pretends otherwise.”
Second Thoughts Massachusetts is a group of disability rights advocates opposed to the legalization of assisted suicide. We testified against the “End of Life Options” bill S.1208 at the hearing in June and held a well-attended legislative briefing a few days after.
What is Not Dead Yet doing to combat the pressure on disabled people and terminally ill people to forgo life-prolonging measures and accept death by “choosing” hospice palliative care? This is much more common than the pressure for physician-assisted suicide, but it is much less widely criticized.
Yes, you’re so right about the prevalence of pressures to forego life-sustaining treatment. And so much of that pressure involves “better dead than disabled” subtext cloaked as supposedly unbiased discussions of individual values and goals. We try to combat this problem. Examples include efforts to push back on The Conversation Project, to first challenge and then develop less biased patient information materials about feeding tubes and breathing support with one of the big advance directive groups, holding the Bioethics Institute in 2014, issuing public policy comments on some of these topics, and promoting the Chris Dunn story in a recent blog. But, admittedly, we’re stretched thin.