On December 2, the Missoulian published a letter from Diane Coleman – President and CEO of Not Dead Yet.
The title the paper gave the letter was: “National disability rights group concerned Montana could legalize assisted suicide” – the title might surprise you, since a lot of sloppy reporters and spin-doctoring reps of assisted suicide organizations have claimed that assisted suicide is legal in that state. It’s not.
Here’s a link to the letter, with text and more info below:
Not Dead Yet is a national disability rights group with members in Montana, some of whom are seniors. On behalf of our members, I write to say that we are extremely concerned that assisted suicide, sometimes euphemistically called “aid in dying,” could be legalized in Montana.
It is estimated that there are 21,265 cases of elder abuse annually in Montana, reported and unreported (http://web.archive.org/web/20101021101332/http://www.eadaily.com/15/elder-abuse-statistics/).
Statistically, 90 percent of elder abusers are a family member or trusted other. Similarly, people with disabilities are up to four times more likely to be abused than their same-age nondisabled peers.
In Oregon and Washington, legal assisted suicide has opened new paths of abuse against persons who “qualify” to use these laws. A more obvious problem is a complete lack of oversight when the lethal drug is administered. If an abuser were to administer the drug without the person’s consent, who would know?
It is simply naive to suggest that assisted suicide can be added to the array of medical treatment options, without taking into account the harsh realities of elder abuse and the related potential for coercion.
For more information about problems with legalization of assisted suicide, please see www.notdeadyet.org and www.montanansagainstassistedsuicide.org.
Diane Coleman,
President/CEO,
Not Dead Yet,
Rochester, New York
(note – URL in text above is different than the one that originally appeared in the letter. The Elder Abuse Daily site seems to be defunct – sadly, organizations that concern themselves with reporting and preventing elder abuse have a harder time finding funding than assisted suicide advocates, it seems. The link provided above is to a snapshot of the original page, courtesy of the internet archive.)
Here’s a reproduction of some of the content of that page:
- Every five seconds, an elderly person is abused.
- California accounts for 10.6% of all elder abuse cases in the U.S.
- Alaska has the fewest number of cases in the U.S. at approximately 8,900 cases per year.
- Just five states account for over 1/3 of all elder abuse cases in the U.S.
- California, Florida, New York, Texas and Pennsylvania have the most cases of elder abuse annually.
| State / Region | Elderly Population* | Cases of Elder Abuse** |
| Arizona | 1,176,503 | 129,952 |
| Alabama | 888,870 | 98,181 |
| Alaska | 80,613 | 8,904 |
| Arkansas | 561,850 | 62,060 |
| California | 5,728,021 | 632,693 |
| Colorado | 748,420 | 82,667 |
| Connecticut | 663,606 | 73,299 |
| Delaware | 169,763 | 18,751 |
| District of Columbia | 98,977 | 10,933 |
| Florida | 4,200,667 | 463,988 |
| Hawaii | 258,934 | 28,601 |
| Georgia | 1,433,316 | 158,318 |
| Idaho | 257,172 | 28,406 |
| Illinois | 2,176,100 | 240,363 |
| Indiana | 1,128,187 | 124,615 |
| Iowa | 596,110 | 65,844 |
| Kansas | 501,329 | 55,375 |
| Kentucky | 791,961 | 87,477 |
| Louisiana | 757,486 | 83,669 |
| Maine | 279,707 | 30,895 |
| Maryland | 964,119 | 106,492 |
| Massachusetts | 1,207,231 | 133,346 |
| Michigan | 1,822,024 | 201,253 |
| Minnesota | 902,284 | 99,662 |
| Mississippi | 516,129 | 57,009 |
| Missouri | 1,110,339 | 122,643 |
| Montana | 192,524 | 21,265 |
| Nebraska | 325,406 | 35,943 |
| Nevada | 432,112 | 47,729 |
| New Hampshire | 243,936 | 26,944 |
| New Jersey | 1,591,554 | 175,796 |
| New Mexico | 360,142 | 39,780 |
| New York | 3,597,839 | 397,402 |
| North Carolina | 1,623,389 | 179,313 |
| North Dakota | 125,521 | 13,865 |
| Ohio | 2,158,611 | 238,431 |
| Oklahoma | 677,530 | 74,837 |
| Oregon | 715,847 | 79,069 |
| Pennsylvania | 2,576,689 | 284,610 |
| Rhode Island | 202,028 | 22,315 |
| South Carolina | 849,263 | 93,806 |
| South Dakota | 157,050 | 17,347 |
| Tennessee | 1,155,990 | 127,686 |
| Texas | 3,515,525 | 388,310 |
| Utah | 344,758 | 38,081 |
| Vermont | 124,102 | 13,708 |
| Virginia | 1,337,055 | 147,685 |
| Washington | 1,127,229 | 124,509 |
| West Virginia | 393,061 | 43,416 |
| Wisconsin | 1,031,904 | 113,980 |
| Wyoming | 93,669 | 10,346 |
| Grand Total | 53,972,452 | 5 5,961,568 |
| * Elderly defined as 60 years of age and older. | ||
| ** Estimated # of reported and unreported cases of elder abuse. | ||
My brain won’t do that list right now. I am here to say that I went to the link to read Diane Coleman’s letter “in situ” (in its place)— and then I read the comments. That got me to spend a considerable percentage of my day’s total cognitive/stamina “supply” on signing up to the Missoulan newspaper in order to post a comment to one commenter. I used my name, but I can’t tell if it got posted and my name (screen name) is not showing and I’m some bit klutzy in re tech things, due to late onset computer use, learning WITH ME/CFS, my severely disabling illness.
People who make “snarky” (a play on the high tech blogs word “snark” for nasty)comments need to be reminded that few of us just drop dead…He, more likely than she but I could be wrong, was patronizing. So I asked if the person making the comment which included what Diane Coleman and members “should” do, if he’d looked at NDY, the blog? I suggested the person get back to us after rolling in my wheels for awhile. Alas, I ran out of steam, but not before I pointed out that more than one thing could happen at a time: monitoring assisted living/nursing homes for abuse and caregivers at home (who will do it? I asked, you can’t even get an automatic autopsy any more if someone does suddenly in a nursing home – and I’d add here, a hospital…)
Nastiness is a sign, often, of anon comments on newspapers. I got banned from (NY) Daily News comments, but Rightwing haters of disabled people (disabilophobia-my word), “talking disabilophobia” in support of hostile policies, such as by NYC Mayor Bloomberg are not banned. (I did make a funny comment about Bloomberg- my last comment…)
Our biggest societal obstacle, an electronic/paper/media barrier, a force-field as they say in sci fi, is propaganda that is against us, the disabled. Education and making as much noise as possible (which NDY knows, shows and has excelled at) is the way to roll, as well as the legal, legislative battle.
(It worked very well for people with AIDS, as done by ACT-UP)and worked well for ADAPT, our “peeps” (people in hip hop).
Final point before I return to bed…I have been jotting notes on paper with pencil (great inventions, works for my disabilities) for the idea that doctors are thought to be immune from myths held by society in general towards disabled people. I’ve said it before, but a BBC story got me “going” during the night: speculation by a doctor when questioned about why babies born via infertility treatment vs natural conception were twice as likely to have asthma (my other disabling illness)as babies conceived the old fashioned way (my term). The doctor couldn’t say “I/we don’t know” but had to throw in the old myth of “stress” – the total nonsense that “maybe it’s more stressful for the mother to have fertility treatment than the ‘normal’ way”….
I returned to the link to Diane Coleman’s letter in the Missoulian, and my comment has been posted. This is good since I didn’t remember all of it for my comment here.