It’s very rare to see even lengthy articles about assisted suicide include more than relatively brief acknowledgement of opposing voices from the disability community and rarer still from other progressives. Therefore, we were impressed to see the Yale University student newspaper, The New Journal, publish an extensive pro/con article by Anouk Yeh featuring substantial discussion with Connecticut leaders Joan Cavanagh and Cathy Ludlum representing Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide and Second Thoughts CT, respectively. Short excerpts from The Debate for Dignity‘s segments opposing assisted suicide laws are below and the whole article can be read HERE.
Progressive Opposition
When I meet Joan Cavanagh, she makes two things very clear. First, her concerns about aid in dying aren’t religious. Second, while she has always been opposed to aid in dying, or assisted suicide, as opponents of the procedure call it, she only started “militantly fighting” against its legalization after her mother’s passing.
Long silver hair and a pair of black, rectangular glasses frame Joan’s face. The first time we meet, I’m intimidated by her incisive, no-frills demeanor—she’s terrifyingly articulate and emails without exclamation points. Throughout our meeting, though, I find myself warming up to her vulnerability and occasional jokes.
Joan is one of the founding members of Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide (PAMAS), a Connecticut-based grassroots organization fighting SB 1076 and variations of the bill that have come before it. PAMAS opposes aid in dying on the basis that its legalization would inevitably lead to its weaponization against economically, socially, and racially marginalized individuals.
It, along with other organizations, has been fighting to “provide a path for leftists and progressives who have social justice concerns” about aid in dying and to disrupt the notion that the opposition is exclusively religious and conservative….
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Disability Rights Opposition
According to Cathy Ludlum, a disability rights activist, there is a long history of the medical industrial complex turning to assisted suicide to avoid accountability for bettering palliative care for terminally ill and disabled individuals. Cathy, a longtime Manchester, CT resident, founded Second Thoughts Connecticut, a disability rights organization fighting against the state legalization of aid in dying.
After a few back and forth emails, the two of us finally hop on a video call together. Cathy uses a wheelchair and joins our conversation clad in thin-rimmed glasses and a toothy grin. In the middle of exchanging introductions, Cathy turns from the Zoom camera and directs her voice towards her computer.
“Computer, wake up. Mouse click. Mouse 5…674.”
Refined by years of practice, Cathy navigates her computer exclusively using voice commands. When I ask Cathy how she started organizing against medical aid in dying, she jumps in and asks me to use the term “assisted suicide” instead.
“Medical aid in dying as a term, really, is misleading,” Cathy says. “If someone is assisting someone in their transition [to death], that would be hospice—assisting the person to be comfortable in their health, alleviating anxiety, existential concerns, and clinical concerns.”
…I look at Cathy, who’s sitting in her wheelchair, and her implicit argument becomes clear: If assisted suicide is legalized, my life and right to live become at risk.
1 thought on “Progressive and Disability Opposition to Assisted Suicide Covered in The New Journal”
It’s just so amazing to me to listen to people testify who’s lived in “fought to live” to the very end leaving no time for hospice. So where in that is evidence the person would have given up if assisted suicide was an option? Then soooo many people who testify they might not use it, but it would comfort them to know it was there. As if “comfort thoughts” are more important than the lives that would be lost needlessly. People testifying that they out lived terminal diagnosis by years to decades, who said they had had pain that would have made them choose assisted suicide over life. That’s hard evidence of the beautiful lives that will be lost to assisted suicide. How could you think your grief or comfort should be elevated over the lives of other people? In Nevada, the Dems finally passed the bill, and the Republican governor veto’d it. Then he went on to veto 12 more bills that would have protected renters, particularly elderly and disabled from the current price gouging going on. Our reward for killing this bill? A 100% increase in our space rent.
It’s just so amazing to me to listen to people testify who’s lived in “fought to live” to the very end leaving no time for hospice. So where in that is evidence the person would have given up if assisted suicide was an option? Then soooo many people who testify they might not use it, but it would comfort them to know it was there. As if “comfort thoughts” are more important than the lives that would be lost needlessly. People testifying that they out lived terminal diagnosis by years to decades, who said they had had pain that would have made them choose assisted suicide over life. That’s hard evidence of the beautiful lives that will be lost to assisted suicide. How could you think your grief or comfort should be elevated over the lives of other people? In Nevada, the Dems finally passed the bill, and the Republican governor veto’d it. Then he went on to veto 12 more bills that would have protected renters, particularly elderly and disabled from the current price gouging going on. Our reward for killing this bill? A 100% increase in our space rent.