Fresh off their strong showing at the June 25 committee hearing on assisted suicide bill H.1926, disability rights advocates were featured in a Statehouse legislative briefing hosted by Rep. Denise Provost (D-Somerville). A few photos from the well attended briefing were posted here last week. Rep. Provost titled the talks “What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Hear What Opponents Have to Say.”
Anita Cameron, Not Dead Yet Director of Minority Outreach, introduced herself as someone with “multiple disabilities, two of which are degenerative, and one which will take my life.”
She said our “inherently racist” healthcare system delivers inferior care to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People Of Color), who experience worse outcomes “with heart conditions, diabetes, cancer, and chronic pain.” Disabled BIPOC received even worse treatment.
“As a Black Latina,” she said, “I could never wrap my head around the assisted suicide phenomenon. I thought that it was some odd thing that privileged White people were into. “
(This quote was picked up by the Cape Cod Times from Anita’s testimony at the committee hearing 2 days earlier.)
Anita told the amazing story of her mother, whom doctors pronounced imminently dying 10 years earlier. Anita’s mom moved back to Colorado to die, but instead revived and is now planning to increase her mobility with knee replacement surgery.
Anita summarized: “Because of the racist nature of our health care system and the tendency of doctors to devalue the lives of disabled and people of color, assisted suicide has no place as an option in Massachusetts.”
John Kelly, Not Dead Yet New England Regional Director, backed up Anita’s talk with slides showing the geographic and class divide evident in the voting patterns for the 2012 ballot question on assisted suicide. Wealthier and whiter parts of the state, such as in Western Mass and Newton, voted strongly yes, while more working class communities, whether majority Latino and black like Lawrence and Springfield, or white like Gardner and Taunton, voted heavily against.
John, who is also the Director of Second Thoughts MA, emphasized that patients under assisted suicide programs are disabled and are reported as desiring death precisely because of their “existential distress” about depending on other people for activities of daily living, which made them feel undignified and like a burden.
John then explained how assisted suicide is like a death penalty, which progressives overall oppose because of the estimated 4% of innocent people sentenced to death. With assisted suicide laws, at least 12%-15% of people who enter six-month hospice will outlive the program. Non-dying people will inevitably get pushed towards death, first by doctor’s mistakes, second by insurance greed, and third by intimate abuse and violence.
Oregonian Jeanette Hall serves as an example of the first group. When Jeanette was diagnosed terminal, she sought assisted suicide, only to be persuaded by her doctor to try more treatment. Alive 19 years later, Jeanette urged Massachusetts in a 2011 letter to the Boston Globe not to make Oregon’s mistake by passing an assisted suicide bill.
A second group of people will get herded toward death because of finances, whether by denial of treatment by insurance companies, or the inability to pay; and a third group will pay the ultimate penalty because of persuasion and bullying, the shame of feeling like a burden, and straight up murder for gain.
John also corrected the falsehood continually pushed by assisted suicide proponents that there have been no abuses in Oregon. He referred to 16 pages of problems included in attendees’ packet of materials, and highlighted the case of Wendy Melcher, whose killers received a tap on the wrist from the Oregon nursing board and no involvement from civil authorities.
Peer Specialist Brian Shea represented M-POWER, a grassroots group of people with lived experience of mental health diagnoses, trauma, and addiction. As someone who has experienced deep depression, Brian described the choice of getting on a bus or driving his wheelchair in front of it. He said that the law’s required mental health consultation would be easy to game by pretending for 50 minutes not to be depressed. There would be no way to remedy mistakes, as the state would descend into “barbarism” by throwing away some of its least valued residents.
Palliative care physician Laura Petrillo, who when living in California had strongly opposed its assisted suicide bill, emphasized that palliative care can control people’s pain and help guide them through a process full of meaning and connection. Laura responded to audience questions about “pain and suffering” with the tenets of palliative care and a call for state expansion of palliative care training.
Rep. Provost began the briefing by inviting Boston University law professor George Annas to discuss the strong role that “substituted judgment” plays in Massachusetts treatment decisions for incapable residents. Once death by assisted suicide is understood as a “benefit,” it will be extended to people who – if they were capable – would reasonably be thought to choose death over treatment.
And a big thanks to disability advocates John Robinson, Don Summerfield, Sandy Durmaskin, and David Rolde, who came out in support of the briefing, and to Patients Rights Action Fund Executive Director Matt Valliere, who helped manage logistics and coordinate speakers at the hearing and a press conference on June 25.
— John Kelly