Press Release: Disability Advocates Testify In NYC Against Assisted Suicide Bill

For Immediate Release             Contacts:  Anita Cameron 720-413-9064
May 3, 2018                                               Diane Coleman 708-420-0539

(New York, NY) Disability rights advocates will testify at a New York Assembly Health Committee hearing today in opposition to a proposed bill (A.2383-A) legalizing doctor assisted suicide. The hearing will be held at 250 Broadway in Manhattan beginning at 11:00 a.m.

Disability advocates invited by the Health Committee to testify include:

• Anita Cameron, Director of Minority Outreach, Not Dead Yet
• Stephanie Woodward, Organizer, ADAPT
• Sharon Shapiro-Lacks, Executive Director, Yad HaChazakah-The Jewish Disability Empowerment Center Inc.
• Susan Dooha, Executive Director, Center for Independence of the Disabled-NY

Cameron was among scores of disability rights advocates dragged out of Congressional offices and hearings last summer and arrested in connection with efforts to save healthcare from Republican cuts.

Cameron will testify about her family experiences with terminal prognoses that were vastly incorrect.

“As disabled people know very well, doctors often make mistakes about whether a person is terminal or not. In June, 2009, while living in Washington state, my mother was determined to be in the final stages of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and placed in hospice. Two months later, I was told that her body had begun the process of dying. . . Almost nine years later, she is still alive, lives in her own home in the community and is reasonably active.”

Cameron is also deeply concerned about the cost-cutting pressures in healthcare. “Although assisted suicide requests in Oregon are lower among Blacks and people of color, that doesn’t mean that this won’t change in more diverse areas, especially as healthcare support lessens,” she said. “Because of the racist, profit-driven nature of our health care system and the tendency of doctors to devalue the lives of disabled, people of color and the poor, assisted suicide has no place as an option in New York.”

Woodward’s testimony will focus on the critical need for home care for people with advanced illnesses and disabilities so they do not feel like a burden on their families, a common reason for assisted suicide requests, and are not forced into nursing facilities. “New York State will not give us the services and supports we need to live in the community, but will give us assisted suicide and call it a choice,” Woodward said.

Not Dead Yet (notdeadyet.org) is part of the New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide (nosuicideny.org), an informal association of many diverse organizations committed to preventing the legalization of assisted suicide in the state.