Some good news from New Hampshire:
A bill to legalize assisted suicide in New Hampshire lost key backing yesterday from a legislative committee when both supporters and opponents joined forces to reject it.The House Judiciary Committee voted 14-3 against the bill that would let terminally ill patients over age 18 obtain lethal prescriptions, with safeguards to prevent abuses.Supporters of assisted suicide said the bill was flawed and teamed up with opponents to vote against recommending the measure to the full House. The committee has been working on the bill since September.The House votes on the recommendation in January. If the chamber accepts the committee recommendation, legislative rules make it nearly impossible for the issue to be brought up again next year.
Good news, but there is reason to remain vigilant. Allies in the state tell us that it’s highly unusual for the full legislature to approve a measure defeated in committee, but it is possible. Assisted Suicide activists could make a push for a full vote – or they might decide this could be a year in which most legislatures have enough on their plates without pushing the envelope on the “right to be killed.”
Our local NDY organizers Tom Cagle and Bunny McLeod will continue to make sure that the disability rights perspective opposing legalized assisted suicide continues to be heard. –Stephen Drake
Last sentence makes a good point.
I have been reading blogs and websites, some that I’ve come to via links from here, NDY. (Others are what I’d call regular political – covering current events, legislation, war/peace,etc.)
It surprises me how many people have confused ideas of what “assisted suicide” is. I’ve been following the issue, as an “interested party”, i.e. I have severely disabling illness, since
Terri Schiavo. I am online just 2 years, and tech-clutz. I’m finding that I get slightly confused by some pro-arguments until I pick apart the wrong/errors in the statements.
So, the general public needs lots of hearing “from us” “about us”
(to paraphrase http://www.disabledinaction.org a NYC disability activist group with good resource information).
What triggered this comment was reading comments on a link from a link from here. I was reading
http://crimsoncrip.wordpress.com
which I found via Crippen’s Blog
(needs an easy url for folks like me) found via NDY. People have mistaken ideas about “assisted suicide”. The above mentioned blogs are in England. I also found
http://www.hoydenabouttown.org via NDY and lauredhel’s page on there. (I am a feminist.)
There is need to remind ourselves and others that the corporate media (some call it mainstream media) is ignorant about disability as we read the waves of stories about “assisted suicide”. Stephen Drake – while it is “murder”, I think we need some good word/phrase to use to counter “assisted suicide”. “Assisted” sounds so “helpful”.
“Helping people”.
When one asks the question, “Who is helped by ‘assited suicide’?” it becomes clearer in relation to society.
As the worldwide recession continues, so does the move to get the public to sanction the rationing of medical care, deny care, cut home care, “hurry up” the “end of life”, push for “assisted suicide”
(“Soylent Green” the movie seemed so far fetched, didn’t it?),
New Orleans post-Katrina style “triage” = who got lethal doses of meds by doctors and who got left to drown vs who got readied for evacuation at Memorial Medical Center and there were no consequences to medical persons for the murders, (the DA called it “murder” but no grand jury indicted)(story on http://www.propublica.org – and no new comments are accepted)
etc.
Etc. includes the NYS “epidemic” plan that was recently posted on http://www.propublica.org that included (as an example) taking breathing equipment from someone who came into a medical center with a chronic lung disease to give to someone else who was in the center for treatment, decision to be made by a “triage” person (one, two, who?)and the breathing equipment was to be given to the person who was deemed better to survive the epidemic. This plan is not science fiction!