…legalized euthanasia, and the Canadian Supreme Court has reversed its 1993 ruling in the Rodriguez case, and said that assisted suicide is A-OK for people with disabilities. In 1990 I looked forward to transit access, usable print materials, more sign language interpreters, acceptance of HIV/AIDS. What I didn’t expect is that 25 years later I would be immersed in a struggle for the lives of people with disabilities. I didn’t expect to be confronti…
…ed by Oregon law co-author Barbara Coombs Lee last fall at a Connecticut forum. As the online journal CTNewsJunkie reported, “Coombs Lee also said the [Oregon-style] legislation would exclude people with dementia and cognitive declines, since they could not make the choice for themselves. ‘It is an issue for another day but is no less compelling,’” she said. Coombs Lee is now the president of the group Compassion & Choices, the saccharine rebrandi…
…t Dead Yet advocate. She was a major player in the NDY protest against the World Federation of Right To Die Societies in September 2014 in Chicago. And she helped lead the protest against the first assisted suicide bill introduced in Albany this year, which received excellent coverage in The Village Voice, including choice quotes such as “People with disabilities are told every day they’d be better off dead,” says Stephanie Woodward, a 26-year-old…
…their own murder at the hands of the person they should have been able to trust the most, and ultimately forgotten. And then the cycle repeats. Today, we gather, and speak the names of those taken from us. But in doing so, we do not just mourn. We kindle new hope, of the possibility of a better world, one in which disabled Americans are recognized as equal and disabled blood is not viewed as cheap and easy to spill. We remember our own – and in do…
…mony co-authored by Carol Gill and myself, Not Dead Yet (NDY) began. The struggle against assisted suicide was about to take a dramatic turn. On June 21, 1996, NDY activists held our first direct action, picketing outside the Michigan cottage where Kevorkian was known to stay. The AP newswire carried a photo of the protest, the first media notice of our opposition. Three years later, when Jack Kevorkian was finally back in a Michigan courtroom, on…
