Dear Mr. Clooney,
We, the undersigned national disability rights organizations, urge you to use your platform to advance disability justice and to defend the rights of people with disabilities against the inherent discrimination and dangers of assisted suicide legislation. For the reasons set forth below, we urge you to reconsider the impact of your involvement.
Like Me Before You and Million Dollar Baby before it, In Love treats disability — in this instance, Alzheimer’s disease — as a fate worse than death, rooted in the eugenic idea that life with a disability is not worth living. On Amy Bloom’s website, AmyBloom.com, amid laudatory reviews of the film’s source material, her memoir In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, appears a starkly ableist description:
“Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees.”
This framing presumes that disability is inherently demeaning and portrays a disabled future as hopeless, redeemed only by suicide as the natural, moral, and rational outcome. This is a dangerous narrative and conclusion that we categorically reject.
According to the American Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s is not a fate worse than death. Moreover, in January 2023, the American Alzheimer’s Association issued a public apology regarding an educational relationship it had unwittingly entered into with Compassion & Choices, the leading national organization promoting the legalization of assisted suicide state-by-state. The apology reads in part:
“[Compassion and Choices’] values are inconsistent with those of the Association. We deeply regret our mistake…”
The Alzheimer’s Association then clarified the values consistent with its mission and with the interests of people living with Alzheimer’s:
“As a patient advocacy group and evidence-based organization, the Alzheimer’s Association stands behind people living with Alzheimer’s, their care partners and their health care providers as they navigate treatment and care choices throughout the continuum of the disease. Research supports a palliative care approach as the highest quality of end-of-life care for individuals with advanced dementia.”
Films like In Love and Me Before You help normalize the idea that suicide is rational and even heroic in the presence of disability. Worse, they suggest that by killing ourselves finally free our caregivers, friends, and families from the perceived burden of our continued existence. People with disabilities deserve the same robust suicide-prevention services as everyone else — not tacit encouragement to die by suicide framed as heroic dignity.
With new information comes new understanding. We recognize that these perspectives may be unfamiliar, and that the themes in In Love reflect a society that has long undervalued and underestimated people with disabilities.
However, within the disability civil rights community, there is no such ambiguity. Every national disability rights organizations that has taken a position on assisted suicide legislation opposes it, and not a single national disability organization supports it. In addition, the National Council on Disability — a bipartisan federal agency advising the President and Congress on disability policy — has warned for nearly 30 years that assisted suicide poses serious dangers to people with disabilities. In short, organizations whose sole mission is to advance the rights and quality of life of people with disabilities oppose assisted suicide advocacy organizations whose mission is to promote death as a “cure” for disability.
Mr. Clooney, on your website, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, under Waging Justice for Women, it states:
“Justice systems around the world are failing women and girls, who too often face oppression and violence simply because they are women.”
The same is true for people with disabilities:
“Justice systems around the world are failing people with disabilities who too often face oppression and violence simply because they are disabled.”
Your Foundation also states:
“Justice, like war, must be waged; it doesn’t just happen on its own,”
and
“For many of the causes we take on, it can be years before we see a clear path to justice.”
Mr. Clooney, disabled people have not been waiting for years for a clear path to justice. We have been waiting for decades.
We urge you to reconsider your involvement in In Love and to refrain from lending your influence to narratives that portray death as an acceptable or dignified response to disability. Especially at a time when proposed cuts to health care and community-based services threaten our lives and our ability to live independently, we ask that you act in recognition of our right to live full lives on our terms, rather than be offered death on someone else’s.
Surely you would agree that it is a moral failing to offer death as a solution, rather than committing the resources and political will necessary to help people live.
We are not dead yet.
Sincerely,
Access Ready
ADAPT
Alliance for Inclusive Education
Association of University Centers on Disabilities
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Autistic Women’s and Nonbinary Network
Collectif JABS
Collectif Lutte et Handicaps pour l’Égalité et l’Émancipation
CommunicationFIRST
Deaf Equality
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
Distant Voices
Front de Gauche Antivalidiste
National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities
Not Dead Yet
Not Dead Yet UK
New Disabled South
Patients Rights Action Fund
Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide
Speak Foundation
TASH
United States International Council on Disabilities