It is disturbing that at a time when the healthcare system is so broken and so many people struggle to get the care and practical support, they need that New York would want to try repeatedly pass legislation which would legalize doctor assisted suicide. The state has shown good judgment in rejecting the idea before and should reject it now.

The pandemic has made evident the deadly health care disparities that people of color, older people and persons with disabilities have always been subjected to. Any law which enables doctors to write lethal prescriptions at the request of people deemed to have six months or less to live, as this bill would, increases risk for devalued patients.

Despite common misconceptions, uncontrollable pain is not a primary reason that people turn to assisted suicide. Data indicates that people often request lethal prescriptions due to perceived lessening of autonomy, or feelings of being burden. As Cliff Perez, a disability rights activist, states, “these reasons are… existential or disability related and ought to be addressed with quality, multidisciplinary care, not death.” It is not so much how individuals view living with limitations caused by illness or disability, but society’s stigma and failure to provide practical supports to address such limitations.

The assisted suicide bill does not address these concerns. One of its supposed “safeguards” is that a person’s doctors must consider him to be mentally capable of making an informed decision in order to eligible for assisted suicide. This means that the person must be able to understand that taking the pills will cause death. There is no requirement though that the individual be evaluated to determine whether he has a stress related mental health issue that might be fueling a desire to die. Terminally ill and newly disabled persons frequently experience demoralization syndrome, a condition which is different from clinical depression, but which is characterized by feelings of being a burden, hopeless and loss of purpose – feelings that could make anyone consider dying. Proponents of the bill can debate what does or does not constitute suicide, but an unbiased medical system does not view suicide prevention services as being only for the young and fleet of foot.

To the extent pain is a factor in sapping a person’s will to live, we should be ensuring doctors can provide patients with appropriate pain management, rather than authorizing them to prescribe drugs to cause death. As a result of mishandling of the opioid crisis, many people with long-term pain for which carefully monitored opioid medicine will provide the only effective relief have found it very difficult to obtain help. Again, there are disparities. Black and Latinx patients with advanced cancer appear less likely than whites to receive opioid medication to address pain in the last weeks of life.

It is also a myth that the pills will always cause a quick, peaceful death. In Oregon, it has sometimes taken people up to 72 hours to die. (9) The FDA has not approved any drug specifically designed to cause death. With doctors free to devise the drug cocktail, side effects like burned mouths occur. Terry Law, a frequently active assisted suicide doctor, says “There’s lots of data on stuff that helps people live longer, but there’s very little data on how to kill people.”

The bill, like most assisted suicide proposals, mandates deception on the death certificate. The bill provides that the death certificate must state the patient’s underlying terminal condition as the cause of death. This hides mistakes in diagnosis and prognosis – demonstrated by the fact that 12%-15% of hospice patients outlive their prognosis by six months or more. It provides a barrier to identifying potential wrongdoing.

As Dr Joseph Marine, professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has stated, assisted suicide “has no basis in medical science or medical tradition…no one will be immune to its long-term corrosive and destructive effects on the health care system.” (13)
Legalizing assisted suicide for one patient group would clear the way to normalizing death-making as “medical treatment,” in an increasing number of instances leading our healthcare system to further endanger those who are already devalued.

Lisa Blumberg is a lawyer, writer and disability activist.

This report comes in large part owing to the exceptional work done by Inclusion Canada -years in the making – who first issued this Press Release to announce this monumental news:

On Wednesday March 26, 2025, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities released a set of recommendations calling on the government of Canada to repeal Track 2 of its assisted suicide and euthanasia program. Specifically, Canada’s 2021 amendment to its Criminal Code that expanded through Bill C-7, which expanded eligibility passed promised safeguards.

Track 2 of the Canadian assisted suicide and euthanasia program allows people with disabilities (“grievous and irremediable medical condition”) whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable to request assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Arguing against the very premise of Track 2, the report notes that the Canadian federal government,”…did not challenge the Quebec Truchon decision which fundamentally changes the whole premise of medical assistance in dying when natural death is reasonably foreseeable to a new program that establishes medically assisted dying for persons with disabilities based on negative, ableist perceptions of the quality and value of the life of persons with disabilities, including that ‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.”

The recommendations, known as “Concluding Observations,” are issued after United Nations treaty bodies review state reports to determine and summarize a country’s progress and the committee’s concerns and recommendations for improvement. These reports offer an authoritative view of human rights in a country. And while the United Nations’ “Concluding Observations” are specific to Canada, their explanation and justification bear welcome validation to the arguments advanced by opponents of legalization efforts in the United States and will function as authoritative guidance in international human rights law for years to come.

Here, we should recall that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990) and was inspired by American leadership. In 2009, President Obama signed the treaty, but as of this moment it still awaits ratification from the United States Senate.

The UN report also directly addresses a common argument advanced by advocates of assisted suicide in the U.S. – namely, that assisted suicide is all about “choice” and an extension of unrealized autonomy, and the so-called “right to die” being fought for; In stark contrast, the committee writes:

“The concept of ‘choice’ creates a false dichotomy by setting up the premise that if persons with disabilities are suffering, it is valid for the State Party to enable their death, with safeguards not guaranteeing the provision of support, and ableist assumptions deemphasizing the myriad of support options for persons with disabilities to live dignified lives , and the systemic failures of the State Party to address the social determinants of health and well-being, such as poverty alleviation, access to healthcare, accessible housing, prevention of homelessness, prevention of gender-based violence, the provision of community-based mental health supports and employment supports;”

Or, as Diane Coleman and Marilyn Golden and others repeated for decades in their predictive warnings, suicide only becomes a rational “choice” when offered to people with disabilities whose lives are seen as not worth living by a system steeped in ableism, and inequality and social consequences arising from bigotry and poverty.

Ian McIntosh

Interim Executive Director

If there is implementation of radical cuts to Medicaid prescribed by Congress, it  will be catastrophic for people with disabilities. Medicaid provides millions of people with access to medical care, nursing care and home and community-based services (HCBS) which people need to get out of bed, go to work, and live vibrantly in their communities rather than being warehoused in institutions. Medicare is no fringe program. It is a pillar of American society.  More than half of all Americans say someone in their family has used the program, and only 17 percent support cutting its budget.

As Marc Morial of the National Urban League has stated,  “Medicaid provides health care to almost half children in the United States. It allows elderly parents and grandparents and people with disabilities to remain in their homes and communities, easing the burden on their loved ones. It covers the costs of life-saving medications for chronic diseases. Ripping away this lifeline for millions of working families… will further deepen the already-severe health inequities for people of color and other marginalized communities. It is a shocking betrayal of our nation’s values…”

Moreover, a New York Times article describes how Medicaid should be considered  to be a middle class benefit. It notes that millions of people who are financially comfortable now may be just one bad break away from needing Medicaid for themselves or a member of their immediate family.

Rachel Litchman is a cartoonist, writer, consultant and full-time wheelchair user. The HCBS component of Medicaid allows her to live independently in her home. In a searing article in Stat, she writes of her concern that the “shadow of the nursing home looms” for her if the cuts happen. She states that “even if Medicaid itself continues to exist, I fear a return of policies of the past that aimed to keep disabled people out of the public sphere, segregated in institutions, and further exposed to death.”

Programs like HCBS give people a range of choices and that is what we all want. It is the dearth of choice that leads people to wonder whether going on is worth it. It is unimaginable what it must be like to say goodbye to a trusted aide with whom you have a respectful and professional relationship and to ask a friend or family member with their own problems and concern to do the most intimate of tasks for you gratis.  It is unimaginable to think of leaving your home where you feel comfortable for the alternative of a semi-private room in an understaffed place run by a for-profit organization and where you must eat dinner at 4:45 pm.   Indeed one of the leading reasons why some people lose the desire to live is fear of confinement in a nursing home.

Whether this is intended or not, Medicaid cuts would fuel the “better dead than disabled” ethos.  We simply cannot allow substantial cuts to occur. Please contact your elected representatives of both  parties and ask them to do all they can to stop them.

For more information on what drastic cuts would mean to people with various types of disabilities, click here.

About the Author: Lisa Blumberg is a lawyer, writer, and disability rights activist.

Out of nearly two thousand entries, 146 films were selected for the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival in Los Angeles. Disposable Humanity captured the Audience Award and received an Honorable Mention for the Slamdance Unstoppable Feature Grand Jury Prize.

In Disposable Humanity, a profound, unforgettable documentary of historic disability injustice, Cameron Mitchell and his family guide the viewer down corridors of Nazi era eugenical horror into a past that many of us think we know but don’t.

Tim Stainton, Director of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship once called Canada’s eugenical descent into assisted suicide and euthanasia, “the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazi’s program in Germany in the 1930s”.

For anyone engaged in fighting health disparities and disability discrimination today, it becomes plain by the end of the film that the present-day creep of assisted suicide laws in America has an essential part of its ancestry rooted in the international ideas, language and maps of Aktion T4 – the Euthanasia Program of yesterday.

In vivid sequence, Disposable Humanity bears witness to the philosophical underpinnings of The Final Solution through a primary disability lens. This moving, living memorial reminds us that without the initial unchallenged idea that disabled lives are lives worth less than others, over 300,000 lives might have been saved, and the Holocaust might have been just an exercise in exile, rather than extermination.

Disposable Humanity is a production about, by and for people with disabilities and their families and friends and is essential viewing.

Ian McIntosh

Interim Executive Director

Rochester, NY, January 13, 2025 – A Brief Note on behalf of The Board of Not Dead Yet:

With the sudden passing of Not Dead Yet’s irreplaceable Founder, President and CEO, Diane Coleman , the Board of Not Dead Yet (NDY) was tasked with ensuring that her legacy continues into the next phase of this important mission, decades in the undertaking. We worked over a period of months, to select and appoint Ian McIntosh as Interim Executive Director. In this unprecedented and challenging time, Ian will provide leadership and direction while stewarding Not Dead Yet’s constant critical mission to oppose the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of disability discrimination.

Ian joins Not Dead Yet having previously served as the Director of Disability Outreach for the Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF), a leading, national, secular, non-partisan leader defending the rights of patients, people with disabilities, our elders, and the poor from the threat of legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia.

We have tasked Ian with focusing on anticipating and planning for mission critical next steps for the organization, which is a strength Ian brings to NDY, as he has a history of working closely with national and international advocates in various capacities. Ian worked closely with Diane, a mentor and close friend, during his time at PRAF, and therefore considers his present role a serious assignment and incredible honor.

In Solidarity,

Emily Wolinsky
Board Chair, Not Dead Yet