Press Release: Legislative Committee Does An End Run Around Disability Advocates

Contact: Deidre Hammon 775-544-9338

Legislative Committee Does An End Run Around Disability Advocates

March 14, 2023

A bill to legalize medically assisted suicide is being railroaded through the Nevada legislature in a manner that appears designed to exclude the voices of people with disabilities, people put most at risk if this bill passes.

The assisted suicide bill was added to today’s Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing agenda at the last minute this morning.

“The legislature has just engaged in a blatant act of discrimination on the basis of disability for hearing the Physician Assisted Suicide bill (SB 239),” said Deidre Hammon with Nevada Not Dead Yet. “Less than 5 hours turn around for a hearing they know the Nevada Disabled Community including disabled veterans oppose. This demonstrates loudly and with malice aforethought that the Physician Assisted Suicide Bill is just codification of ‘Better off dead than disabled.’”

SB 239 was only introduced last Wednesday, March 8^th. Disability advocates who have opposed these bills in prior years and were holding an advocacy day that same Wednesday, but had no prior notice of the bill’s planned introduction and only learned of it afterward.

The 2023 version of the bill would allow not only a physician but also a “physician assistant or advanced practice registered nurse to prescribe a medication that is designed to end the life of a patient….”

#