John B. Kelly
Testimony in strong opposition to AB2x 15
September 3, 2015
Members of the Finance Committee:
If you are opposed to the death penalty, I hope you will have second thoughts about legalized assisted suicide. Yes, there is a committed group of proponents who believe that assisted suicide would benefit them, and many people have stories of difficult and traumatic deaths. But compelling personal stories notwithstanding, a social policy of assisted suicide is just as dangerous as the death penalty.
We now know that many completely innocent people have been sentenced to death either through mistakes (witness misidentification, circumstantial evidence,) or abuse of the system (prosecutorial and police misconduct). Strong majorities are forming against the death penalty.
Mistakes and abuse in the medical system also sentence innocent people to death. People who are misdiagnosed (see John Norton), people who would respond to more treatment (Jeanette Hall), people who wouldn’t die for years (Oregon’s statistics), will be led to tragically “choose” death. And because not all families are loving or financially secure, innocent people will be bullied (Kate Cheney) or worse by abusive families and caregivers (Wendy Melcher). With thousands or even millions of dollars at stake, beneficiaries will be motivated to ensure a premature death (Thomas Middleton).
Just like the death penalty, assisted suicide exacerbates existing inequalities across race and class. People who are mentally ill, people of color, and poor people are much more likely to be sentenced to death. Assisted suicide programs have offered lethal drugs to patients with severe depression (Michael Freeland) and to people denied treatment (Barbara Wagner). Patients of color receive substandard, often deadly lack of medical care, and are the targets of educational campaigns to prepare advanced directives, give up on treatment, and enter hospice.
Assisted suicide is unique in that the leading proponents are more well-to-do, better educated and whiter than the general population. People of color oppose legalized assisted suicide (Pew Research Center on End-Of-Life), and do not participate in the legalized programs (Oregon statistics). And yet the great cost-savings potential of early death already drives much of of end-of-life policy. We poorer people are already under increasing pressure to refuse life-saving treatment (even antibiotics or temporary ventilation). For people who are already viewed as “better off dead,” assisted suicide will become a recommended option.
Please think about the profound social implications of enshrining in policy the belief that sometimes it is more dignified, more respectable, to die early. Rather than aid in dying, please focus on aid in living and ending the vast inequalities that are distorting our society.
John B. Kelly
References are all searchable at the California-based Disability Rights & Education Defense Fund (DREDF) page on assisted suicide: http://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted-suicide/ .
John B. Kelly
New England Regional Director
Not Dead Yet
Boston, MA
[Editor’s Note: For another interesting comparison of assisted suicide laws and the death penalty, see John Witman’s 11/29/14 op-ed in the Times of Trenton, Assisted suicide will not work in New Jersey.]
Brilliant Comment by John Kelly who tells it like it is. I would just add to emphasize – that because Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) is the cheapest, less burdensome, fastest FINAL SOLUTION for all of the parties involved; under $l, 000.00, for Medicare, Medicaid, Big Private Advantage and GAP Insurers, the commercial sector Big Health Insurance, the patient, the family, and the heirs, this is the GUARANTEE that PAS will be misused and abused.
And, YES, prisoners ARE treated with more compassion by the State because there is always a physician standing by, as required by State Law, when they execute prisoners. And, of course, there cannot be a physician standing by when the patient takes the LETHAL prescription that is sanctioned under state law.
Perhaps I am unaware of how strong opposition to the death penalty may be growing, but I think that arguing for one controversial issue using another controversial issue is a poor strategy. Mr Kelly and the disabled community have made great arguments against assisted suicide that stand on their own . Assisted suicide harms the vulnerable that includes the elderly, the disabled, and the dying who fear loss of support and control. Capital punishment is the law in many more states than assisted suicide so why try to leverage its support?
Assisted ‘sui’cide or ‘assisted dying’ puts to death society as a whole
Who claims for himself the “right to die” turns the others to his executioners. His “right to die” constitutes for others the OBLIGATION to kill him. The legalization of assisted ‘sui’cide or an assisted dying act would change the whole society; it would signify the death of society as a whole. In fact and in truth, no-one remains unconcerned by what is being done to another human being. Man is man only through others who recognize and respect him as man. Even relationships based on extreme enmity, such as the one between the torturer and the tortured, are pervaded by this mutual dependence. Frantz Fanon, on writing about his experience during the Algerian liberation struggle, illustrated this with the example of the torture committed by French colonialists: “And it’s precisely that annihilating silence … , that silence that is annihilating the torturer! We encounter here, I say, a very old law that forbids any part to remain unconcerned … when man simultaneously claims and defends his unlimited humanity.” (The Wretched of the Earth). Fanon noted that even the torturer desires to be recognized and respected by the victim of torture he inflicts on him. 150 years before Fanon, Hegel described this desire for mutual recognition and respect as a fight for life or death and as a FUNDAMENTAL LAW of any human coexistence
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Thus, who is killing another human being and who does this WITH THE CONSENT OF SOCIETY, puts to death society as a whole.
A society is composed of social beings. But a society, which is no longer able to differentiate between social beings and its decomposition must probably be considered to be in its entirety a pretty dead society. Peace to its ashes?
Both euthanasia (some call it euthaNAZIa) and assisted ‘sui’cide mean that there is a war going on, a war against the dis-abled, the old, the ill, the weak, a war against us all. Like a horse who broke its leg people are shot, not by a roaring gun but secretly behind closed doors by a syringe, so no noise of the dying patients shall alarm us.
But people begin to see through that poisoned fog and fight back. In this regard I recommend two insightful contributions on the internet:
Cutting short life is annihilation of the possibility to continue making experiences and to grasp the sense of earlier experiences.
Numbers and supernumeraries.
h.drager