A Boston University News Service article, Medical aid in dying bills split Massachusetts once again, yesterday extensively quoted John Kelly, NDY’s New England Regional Director, as well as Ruthie Poole, President of the statewide organization M-POWER. While their disability rights based concerns about the Massachusetts assisted suicide bill should have been featured much earlier in the article, their insights contributed to a more balanced overall piece than we usually see. Below are the quotes and paraphrases from these two strong disability activists:
John Kelly, director of the disability rights group Second Thoughts Massachusetts and New England Regional Director of Not Dead Yet, said his organizations have been fighting against aid-in-dying bills for years.
“The proponents say that it’s about pain and suffering,” said Kelly. “But it’s almost never about pain. It’s about dignity and control.”
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A recurring concern from the opponents is that the choice to end one’s life, while marketed as an individual one, is never truly individual, as people can experience pressures from friends and family. People who seek to end their life, said Kelly, do so because they fear being a burden or because they are upset about losing “dignity and social status.”
Ruthie Poole, president of M-POWER, a statewide organization made up of people with “lived experience of mental health diagnosis, trauma, and addiction,” testified that the bill would disproportionately affect people with mental health.
“Suicide contagion is real,” Poole said. “Any assisted suicide program will send the message to people in mental distress – old, young, physically ill or not – that suicide is a reasonable answer to life’s problems. It isn’t.”
Kelly, who has been paralyzed below the shoulders since his 20s, said that the prejudice stacked against people with disabilities and social situations are driving these bills. If passed, he said, they would only reinforce the idea that a life as a disabled person is a life not worth living.
“People who have spent their whole life identifying as able, when they become disabled, they use the same prejudice that they applied against others to themselves,” Kelly said. “Because in this country, if you’re disabled, you’re seen as less than.”
Many opponents of the bill argue that the focus should be on providing better end-of-life care, rather than death. In particular, they noted the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the disproportionate care received by communities of color and the disability community.
Focusing on providing better choices includes providing financial support to the patients, providing home care, and ensuring they do not have to rely on their families at the end of their lives.
“As palliative care experts say, there’s always more that you can do,” Kelly said. “What we think is that palliative care should be improved and everyone should have the same rights to counseling, spiritual guidance, pain relief.”
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To read the whole article, go here.