This Thanksgiving, Please Thank CDR for Fighting NY Assisted Suicide Bills

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[Editor’s Note: The Center for Disability Rights provides the office headquarters for NDY and is a long time supporter of NDY’s mission and work.  Earlier this year, CDR led a disability protest in Albany against the first 2015 assisted suicide bill to be introduced, gaining coverage in the Village Voice.  Now that proponents for legalizing assisted suicide have declared New York to be their number one target state, CDR wants to hire a staff person in Albany who will focus on defeating this dangerous public policy.  Please donate to CDR’s “GoFundMe” project to make this possible.  Below is CDR’s request for your urgently needed support.]

Who Are We?
The Center for Disability Rights is a disability-led service and advocacy organization that works for the rights of people with disabilities of all ages to live in the community.

What Do We Want?
Now that California has legalized assisted suicide, assisted suicide proponents have identified New York State as the next battleground for legalizing this awful, deadly practice. The battle will be fought in Albany, and in meetings across the state. We need to hire a person to represent the Disability Community in Albany and across the state. This GoFundMe campaign will help us to hire that person.

Why Oppose Assisted Suicide?
Assisted suicide is a deadly expression of ableism — the belief that people with disabilities are less than non-disabled people. Less worthy of care. Having less dignity. Less worthy of life. These beliefs are all around us. Whether we are old or young, terminal or not terminal, when assisted suicide is legal, these discriminatory beliefs will cause people with disabilities to be killed against their will and without their consent.

How Will The Money Be Used?
We will use the money to hire an advocate who is passionate about defeating assisted suicide in New York. This campaign will pay for the salary and benefits of an advocate, as well as his or her expenses to travel to events around the state; talk about why a public policy of legalizing assisted suicide is dangerous to old, ill, and disabled people; pitch stories to media organizations; and coordinate with other advocates on presenting the disability perspective on assisted suicide to policymakers. The advocate will also work on creating and promoting a public awareness campaign to show a positive vision of living with a disability in the community.

When Do You Need the Money?
We hope to hire this advocate early in January 2016, before the legislative session opens. Accordingly, we have about six weeks to raise the money to pay for their  salary and expenses.

Why Does This Matter To You?
This matters to us because it will be our people, people with disabilities, who lose their lives if assisted suicide is legalized are killed. Not every person with a disability has a terminal illness, and doctors are notoriously unreliable in predicting when someone will die. But every person who has a terminal illness has a disability, or will acquire a disability before they die. Where assisted suicide is legal, an heir (someone who stands to inherit from the person) or abusive caregiver may steer someone towards assisted suicide, witness the request, pick up the lethal dose, and even give the drug — no witnesses are required at the death, so who would know? That is discrimination made deadly, and deadly discrimination made legal.

Aren’t You Overstating Your Case?
No. Assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon for seventeen years. Researchers and the mainstream media identified multiple cases in Oregon of people with disabilities and older adults being pushed by family members or other “caregivers” to request a lethal prescription, or being “assisted” to take the lethal dose without any independent witnesses or proof that the person consented at the time. Proponents of assisted suicide claim that the Oregon law is working perfectly: that is only true if by working perfectly they mean that it is killing some people without consent and without any action from the state.

To support this critical effort, go to CDR’s GoFundMe.

Stephen Mendelsohn: CT Suicide Prevention Plan 2020 Includes Concerns About Disability & Assisted Suicide

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[Editor’s Note:  This Guest Blog is from Stephen Mendelsohn, one of the leaders of Second Thoughts Connecticut.]

This is likely a first from the mainstream suicide prevention community:  The Connecticut Suicide Advisory Board (CTSAB) recognizes that legalizing assisted suicide encourages people with disabilities to commit suicide.  Here’s the relevant excerpt from the State of Connecticut Suicide Prevention Plan 2020 at p. 44:   
 

People with Chronic Health Conditions and Disabilities

Living with chronic or terminal physical conditions can place significant stress on individuals and families. As with all challenges, individual responses will vary. Cancer, degenerative diseases of the nervous system, traumatic injuries of the central nervous system, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, chronic kidney disease, arthritis and asthma are known to elevate the risk of mental illness, particularly depression and anxiety disorders.

In these situations, integrated medical and behavioral approaches are critical for regularly assessing for suicidality.  Disability-specific risk factors include: a new disability or change in existing disability; difficulties navigating social and financial services; stress of chronic stigma and discrimination; loss or threat of loss of independent living; and institutionalization or hospitalization.

Until recently, the CTSAB was considering assisted suicide of the terminally ill as a separate issue from suicide prevention. The active disability community in Connecticut, however, has been vocal on the need for suicide prevention services for people with disabilities. There may be unintended consequences of assisted suicide legislation on people with disabilities. Peace (2012)** writes that “Many assume that disability is a fate worse than death. So we admire people with a disability who want to die, and we shake our collective heads in confusion when they want to live.”

People with disabilities have a right to responsive suicide prevention services. The CTSAB intends to continue to explore the needs of the disability community for such services.

Targeted Recommendations:

  • Develop greater scrutiny of someone’s intentions to die.
  • Identify and train practitioners to develop expertise in the work with disabled people who are suicidal.
  • Do not “assume” suicide is a “rational” response to disability.
  • Treat mental health conditions as aggressively as with a person without disability.
  • CTSAB should encourage and increase participation from the disability community and encourage educational presentations.

Cathy Ludlum presented our issues to the CTSAB back in March 2014 and it appears they have taken our concerns about disability discrimination in suicide prevention seriously.  Second Thoughts Connecticut is now listed on their website as a member. Other states still need our input into their state suicide prevention plans to include the disability perspective.  Some states, such as Oregon and Washington (the first two states to legalize assisted suicide), have state suicide prevention plans that only focus on youth while ignoring elder suicide.  Our success in Connecticut can be useful not only in encouraging a change in other states’ suicide prevention policies, but in making our case that what Compassion & Choices calls “aid in dying” is suicide that should be treated no differently merely because the person affected is old, ill, or disabled.

** This refers to the Hastings Center article by Bill Peace, an NDY Board member, entitled Comfort Care As Denial of Personhood.

Attorney Stephanie Woodward’s Op-Ed Published In Syracuse Press

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Attorney Stephanie Woodward is Director of Advocacy at the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, New York.  She writes about how her experiences as a disabled woman inform her opposition to the legalization of assisted suicide in a new guest editorial entitled Why disabled people like me fear medically assisted suicide.  Here’s an excerpt:

We’re often regarded as incapable of making our own decisions and unworthy of respect. However, when one disabled person announces they want to die, they’re lauded in the press and on social media. Sara Myers, for example, has Lou Gehrig’s disease and has received a slew of media attention for wanting assisted suicide because she began to experience disability. Media focused on Myers’s use of a wheelchair and her need for assistance in showering and toileting to demonstrate why assisted suicide should be available to her. For full disclosure, I use a wheelchair and have needed assistance with both showering and toileting in my life, and I expect I’ll need more assistance as I age. I take it very personally when media and society lists these as valid reasons to want to die.

With all of these negative stereotypes and stigmas against disabled people, combined with the praise a disabled person receives when they announce that they want to die, nothing scares me more than the legalization of assisted suicide.

For her complete commentary, go here.

Stephanie has some great history as a Not 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.

Stephanie Woodward

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 disability rights lawyer who was at the protest in her wheelchair. “Instead of giving suicide prevention or help, [these bills] open the doors for us to off ourselves.”  And her other quotes are really worth a read here.

We’re really lucky to have her strong voice now that NY is in the crosshairs.

Rochester, NY: “Don’t buy into ‘aid in dying’” Guest Column by NDY’s Stephen Drake

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Rochester, NY is my hometown. I was born here and lived here until I was 25. After that, I lived on-and-off in Syracuse and Rochester. In 1997, I moved to Chicago and moved back to Rochester in 2008. I plan to spend the rest of my life here.

I submitted an op-ed (guest essay) last week, spurred by the publication of a pro-assisted suicide op-ed written by the Executive Director of End of Life Choices New York (he called it “aid in dying). Ironically, on the opposite page was an essay about preventing teen suicides. Apparently that didn’t translate as irony with the editor(s) of the opinion page.

Today, Saturday, October 31, my op-ed was published in the Opinion section of the Democrat and Chronicle. The editors were more than fair (they published it, after all), asking for documentation of some of the assertions in the essay and making a few small edits that didn’t affect the substance of the op-ed.

Below is a link to the essay. I’ve also excerpted the first paragraph. I would appreciate it if folks would go to the newspaper site to read the whole article – newspapers do take note of the number of hits each article gets. Feel free to submit comments, of course.

Don’t buy into ‘aid in dying’

Recently, you’re hearing and reading a lot about “aid in dying” — a relatively new term that is increasingly used in place of “assisted suicide.” You’re also being told that the issues surrounding assisted suicide are simple, with the only objections coming from far-right Christian conservatives.

A quick note – one item I shared with the editors was a document from 2005 that shows the Oregon assisted suicide law has no real provision for investigation of any incidents of assisted suicide that might have violated the law.  Here’s a link to the document, with its contents included under the link:

Oregon Dept. of Human Services Press Release (March 4, 2005)

DHS news release

March 4, 2005

Contact: Bonnie Widerburg (503) 731-4180
Program contact: Richard Leman (503) 731-4273

No authority to investigate Death with Dignity case, DHS says

 

The Oregon Department of Human Services has no authority to investigate individual Death with Dignity cases, officials said Friday.
The state law authorizing physician-assisted suicide neither requires nor authorizes investigations by DHS, said Barry S. Kast, DHS assistant director for health services.

“DHS’ role is that of a steward of data about the use of the law,” Kast said. “This is a law, not a DHS program, and our only legal role is to report accurate aggregate data about the use of the law.”

The question was raised by news reports about an Oregon man who regained consciousness after taking a lethal dose of medication prescribed under the law.

Kast said the state boards of medical examiners and pharmacy have authority to investigate medical cases under certain circumstances, although he said the state’s physician-assisted suicide law doesn’t require them to investigate.

In its annual reports, available on its We​b site, DHS reports aggregate data such as the number of people who used the law, underlying diseases and demographics. DHS is prohibited by federal law from reporting medical information about specific patients either living or dead, Kast said. DHS reports data every March, and will release the seventh annual report on March 10.

NDY Submits Comments On Adult Protective Services Guidelines

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The Administration for Community Living (part of the Administration on Aging within the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services) is seeking comments on draft voluntary consensus guidelines for Adult Protective Services.  The original deadline for comments was October 30, but it’s been extended to November 13.  More information and a portal for submitting online comments is here.

Not Dead Yet submitted two sets of comments, one addressing abuses in health care decision-making by surrogates and providers, the other addressing abuses in states that have legalized assisted suicide.

NDY introduced lengthy comments on health care decision-making as follows:

A couple of weeks ago, Not Dead Yet was contacted by two sisters who are daughters of a woman in the hospital. They claimed that a third sister had decided to withhold tube feeding and fluids from their mother, despite the existence of a video taped statement by the mother that she wanted to continue treatment. The third sister held the mother’s proxy, but the other two sisters claimed that her motivation was inheritance. The sisters reported being banned from visiting their mother.   We referred them to legal assistance. Over the nearly twenty years we have been in existence, we have received many calls like this. Given the high rate of elder financial abuse and the aging population, it is likely the frequency of such calls will increase.

Health care decision making laws vary by state, but are supposed to be governed by general principles set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Cruzan decision (497 U.S. 261, 110 S. Ct. 2841, 111 L. Ed. 2d 224, 1990). The Court found that there is a right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, including food and fluids by tube, and that a surrogate decision maker could make that decision for a person who was unable to make and communicate their own decision. However, the surrogate’s decision must be based on what the person would wish rather than on the surrogate’s personal preference if they were in similar circumstances or other factors.

For the complete comment with examples of problem cases, go here.

NDY introduced the comment on assisted suicide this way:

Four states, Oregon, Washington, Vermont and California, have statutes legalizing assisted suicide.   Where assisted suicide is legal, an heir (someone who stands to inherit from the patient) or abusive caregiver may steer someone towards assisted suicide, witness the request, pick up the drugs and, since no disinterested witness is required at the death, even give the lethal dose. APS workers should be educated about these statutes so that can be alert to cases of coercion and abuse and, hopefully, prevent resulting harms to an older or disabled individual.

Although proponents claim that assisted suicide statutes contain safeguards to prevent coercion and abuse, the actual provisions are too weak to be effective. A short and clear analysis of the law’s provisions is provided by elder law attorney Margaret Dore in the article “Death With Dignity”: What Do We Advise Our Clients? https://www.kcba.org/newsevents/barbulletin/BView.aspx?Month=05&Year=2009&AID=article5.htm . Dore states:

The Act requires an application process to obtain the lethal dose, which includes a written request form with two required witnesses. The Act allows one of these witnesses to be the patient’s heir. The Act also allows someone else to talk for the patient during the lethal-dose request process, for example, the patient’s heir. This does not promote patient choice; it invites coercion. . . . Once the lethal dose is issued by the pharmacy, there is no oversight. The death is not required to be witnessed by disinterested persons. . . . With no witnesses present, someone else can administer the lethal dose without the patient’s consent. Indeed, someone could use an alternate method, such as suffocation. Even if the patient struggled, who would know? The lethal dose request would provide an alibi. This situation is especially significant for patients with money. (Citations omitted.)

The assisted suicide state reports are based on forms filed by the physician who issued the lethal prescription and the dispensing pharmacy, and do not enable identification of cases involving coercion or abuse. However, cases have come to light though mainstream media.

For the complete comment, which highlighted three cases described in DREDF’s Oregon and Washington State Abuses and Complications, go here.

In connection with both comments, we hope that APS workers will in the future be trained to recognize and prevent abuses whereby elders and people with disabilities are denied health care they desire or are subjected to coercion and abuse under assisted suicide laws that throw a blanket of immunity over the perpetrators.