Colorado ADAPT, NDY Tell Assisted Suicide Advocates They Will Resist Legalization – NDY Board Member Anita Cameron Interviewed on Local News

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Last month, we shared a press release issued by Colorado activists from Not Dead Yet and ADAPT protesting an appearance by Compassion and Choices CEO Barbara Coombs Lee in Boulder, Colorado.

Since then, it’s become apparent that Colorado is indeed one of the states being targeted for legalization of assisted suicide. KUSA Channel 9 broadcast a story about proposed legislation that featured parts of an interview with NDY board member Anita Cameron.

Unfortunately, the video isn’t captioned, but there’s a print story underneath the video on this link.

Here’s an excerpt covering Anita’s part in the story:

But it’s not just religious groups who want to keep doctors from having the ability to end a life. Disability advocacy groups across the country worry about the implications of these laws. They fear those with disabilities will be coerced into using the law to end their lives early.

Anita Cameron is nearly blind, has multiple sclerosis and suffers from a condition called cerebellar ataxia. She sits on the board of a national disability organization called “Not Dead Yet.”

“This right to die is going to turn into the duty to die because people will be coerced,” Cameron said.

It’s a concern often voiced by groups like “Not Dead Yet.” They fear that people with disabilities and the elderly, with worsening conditions, may be pressured into seeking life-ending medication even if they do not really want to die.

“As your condition progresses, you require more care or more services, you are more apt to feel, I don’t want to be a burden to my family,” Cameron said.

These are excellent comments. Like many of us who have gone through interviews in which only a statement or two get broadcast or printed, Anita reported in a Facebook post that she felt other points she made were stronger ones.  That’s one of the tricky things about edited interviews – you have to make sure you stick to strong and valid points since anything that seems fuzzy or weak will be the one the reporter most often uses. Obviously, if Anita thought the above remarks weren’t her strongest points, she succeeded (and better than I have in many instances) in making only strong points and statements.

Disability perspective aired in Brittany Maynard media coverage

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This is a quick sharing from our “In the News” section of our website, with excerpts from articles that included the disability perspective in the last two days of coverage of the assisted suicide issue spurred by media attention to the Brittany Maynard story.  Marilyn Golden, John Kelly and I have also had op-eds published very recently, and links to those have been posted under “Op eds.”  I apologize for the lack of analysis of the coverage, but I’m sure that our regular readers are very aware of how one-sided the majority of coverage has been.

Brittany Maynard’s Storybook Ending (Townhall.com, 11/4/14)

Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund fears that Maynard’s storyline will create “suicide contagion” as other young people, even those who are not terminally ill, see her as a model. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “more than 50 research studies worldwide have found that certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals. The magnitude of the increase is related to the amount, duration and prominence of coverage.”

Aid-in-dying local conversation (WHAM Cha. 13, 11/4/14)

“It’s not about people taking their own lives it’s setting up a system where medical providers and everyone involved are guaranteed immunity in assisting someone with suicide, the doctor acts as gate keeper,” said Stephen Drake of the “Not Dead Yet” advocacy group. “That’s kind of dangerous public policy in terms of making that significant difference because the suicide prevention statues are based on the idea lives are valuable.” The group “Not Dead Yet” is a disability rights group who believes aid-in-dying laws discriminate against old, ill and disabled. Drake explains doctors can be wrong and sometimes people who are once called terminal end up living much longer.

Brittany Maynard’s death could spur action on assisted suicide in California (Sacramento Bee, 11/3/14)

“The number of people who are at risk of significant harm (is) so much larger than the people who would be helped,” said Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. “If assisted suicide is legal, some people’s lives will be ended without their consent through mistakes and abuse.”

Offering death as an option would influence not just patients, Golden said, but also doctors and insurance companies who help guide end-of-life decisions.

“There is a deadly mix between our broken profit-driven health system and the option of assisted suicide, which will become the cheapest so-called treatment,” Golden said. “Will insurers do the right thing or the cheap thing?”

More attention to right-to-death debate after Maynard’s death (USA Today, 11/3/14)

At the time of death, the laws don’t require an independent witness to verify it’s the patient who is administering the drugs themselves or not being pressured to take the drugs, said Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights organization that opposes legalizing assisted suicide.

“You don’t really know what’s going on behind closed doors,” Coleman said.

The Future of the Right-to-Die Movement (U.S. News & World Report, 11/3/14)

Marilyn Golden, senior policy analyst at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, says Maynard’s case may present a compelling argument on an individual level, “but we must look more broadly at society, at all the people who stand to be harmed.”

She says the Oregon law does not do enough to protect vulnerable people from being pressured by abusive care workers, family members or even their insurance companies. Furthermore, she says, diagnoses of how long a patient has to live can be wrong, and there is not enough being done to screen for mental depression or other psychiatric issues.

“When people read the fine print, assisted suicide bills are defeated in legislatures,” she says, noting there are other legal forms of care, known as palliative care, that can relieve the suffering of the terminally ill.

Boulder, CO: Disability Rights Activists Protest Compassion and Choices President Visit

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For Immediate Release:  October 26, 2014

Contact:

Anita Cameron, 720-369-6983
Dawn Russell, 303-884-1471

Disability Rights Activists Protest Compassion and Choices President Visit

Boulder, CO – Disability rights activists from Not Dead Yet and ADAPT are protesting the visit to the West Boulder Senior Center of Compassion and Choices President, Barbara Coombs Lee. Coombs Lee is in town to give a presentation called, Death with Dignity: Colorado Next? as part of a national push to legalize assisted suicide.

“The legalization of assisted suicide puts me and others with disabilities at risk”, said Anita Cameron, one of the organizers of the protest, and a member of Not Dead Yet. “Due to our flawed health care system, it costs much less to kill me than to care for me. I’m at higher risk of abuse and coercion, so my ‘right’ to die evolves into my duty to die.”

The group says that there are no real safeguards in assisted suicide laws; all a doctor must do to achieve criminal and civil immunity is to state that he or she was acting in good faith that a patient was terminally ill and voluntarily sought assisted suicide. They also say that assisted suicide laws violate the Americans with Disabilities Act because people receive or don’t receive suicide prevention based solely on the status of their health, creating a double standard.

“We are not here to disrespect anybody”, said Dawn Russell, of ADAPT. “We just want to let Compassion and Choices know that we, along with a number of national disability groups oppose legalizing assisted suicide. It doesn’t give us choices. It devalues our lives. I don’t want to be pressured into killing myself, which is what this will come down to. I want to live!”

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Press Statement: Disability Rights Groups Not Dead Yet and Second Thoughts Issue Statement Defending Dr. Ira Byock in Assisted Suicide Debate

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[Editor’s Note: The PRWeb version of this Press Statement is available online in pdf format here.]

Not Dead Yet and Second Thoughts, disability rights groups that oppose legalization of assisted suicide, issue the following Statement in support of Dr. Ira Byock’s role in the public policy debate spurred by the Brittany Maynard case:

“Dr. Ira Byock, one of the nation’s leading palliative care physicians and author of ‘The Best Care Possible’, has come under intense criticism lately for his opposition to legalizing assisted suicide.  During the last two weeks, Dr. Byock appeared on PBS Newshour, 60 Minutes and the Diane Rehm Show to debate Barbara Coombs Lee, president of the assisted suicide advocacy group, Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society).

“Media attention to the public policy debate has increased dramatically in recent weeks, due to a Compassion and Choices video gone viral.  The video depicts the tragic illness of Brittany Maynard, who says she plans to end her life using Oregon’s assisted suicide law and to use her case to urge passage of similar laws nationwide.

“Dr. Byock is right to decry our health care system for its scandalous deficiencies in meeting the needs of seriously ill and dying people.  He’s also right to warn against bringing the physicians we all depend on into the role of prescribing suicide as a new kind of ‘treatment.’  And he’s right to be concerned about legalizing the cheap ‘treatment’ of assisted suicide in our profit-driven health care system.

“‘Dr. Byock urges attention to the crying need for high quality, patient-centered care that supports the value and dignity of dying people,’ said Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet.  ‘When I reach the terminal stages of my progressive neuromuscular disability, I hope that I will have a doctor like him.’

“What disabled people see is the likelihood that what is now offered to terminally ill people to prevent suffering will get extended to disabled people who may experience similar suffering. During the Diane Rehm Show, Byock raised one of the disability community’s concerns as follows: ‘And I actually would love to hear from Barbara what you say to somebody like Brittany who simply is suffering at that level but isn’t terminally ill? Do you say to them, we can’t help you because you don’t — you fall outside of the laws and the regulations of Oregon?’

“Coombs Lee usually says that her organization’s goal is Oregon-style laws for people with a terminal diagnosis, but at a recent Connecticut forum, she affirmed a broader agenda as reported in CT News Junkie:  Coombs Lee also said the legislation would exclude people with dementia and cognitive declines, since they could not make the choice for themselves. ‘It is an issue for another day but is no less compelling,’ she said.

“In addition, Coombs Lee’s organization promotes VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) as a peaceful way to die that is legal in all states, whether or not the person is terminally ill.  ‘Their articles and materials urge doctors and families to cooperate with VSED,’ said Coleman, ‘which demonstrates a broader policy agenda than the current media focus.’

“However, disability concerns go beyond the strictly medical issues that affect old, ill and disabled people.  ‘Most people don’t realize that people with disabilities are two to four times more likely to be abused than our nondisabled peers,’ said John Kelly, director of Second Thoughts.  ‘And not enough people have heard about the rising rates of elder abuse, or know that the primary perpetrators are family and caregivers.  That’s the real world context for these ill-conceived laws.’

“Assisted suicide laws may appear to offer patient rights, but their actual provisions grant blanket legal immunity to physicians and other involved participants. Even when the law’s criteria are not met, a simple claim of ‘good faith’ by the doctor or family member confers legal immunity.  Once the drugs are obtained by the patient or family, the Oregon law takes no further interest. There is no requirement that an independent witness observe the death to ensure that the lethal dose is actually self-administered, or even that there is consent.  Barbara Coombs Lee’s claim of ‘transparency’ is completely false.

“Legalization of assisted suicide often looks acceptable when the focus is solely on an individual.  However, not every terminal prognosis is correct, not everyone’s doctors know how to deliver expert palliative care, and not everyone has a loving husband and family.  A closer examination of the issue reveals the immense harm legalization poses to vulnerable people as well as society as a whole.

“Assisted suicide legislation was rejected this year in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New Jersey due to bipartisan opposition from a broad coalition of disability rights organizations, medical professionals and associations, palliative care specialists, hospice workers and faith-based organizations.”

 

In the news: Canada SC Case

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In Canada this week, the issues of assisted suicide and euthanasia were argued before the Supreme Court.  Here’s some of the coverage/commentary published before the date of the arguments (10/15):

Dave Hingsburger is a respected – almost revered, and for good reason – voice in the disability rights community.  He missed a presentation at a parliamentary luncheon at Ottawa to speak on assisted suicide. He took his notes and took to his blog – Rolling Around In My Head – to give us “Bias, Bigotry and My Life“:

Two days after becoming a wheelchair user, someone said to me, “I don’t know how you do it, I’d rather be dead than in a wheelchair.” That was the first time that this was said to me. It was not the last. This attitude is increasingly present in our society, movies love plots where newly disabled people beg for death and are subsequently relieved of the burden of life. This attitude, the one that death is preferable to life in a wheelchair – who guarantees that my doctor, my surgeon, my specialist does not have this prejudice? Who assures that prejudice against the poor doesn’t lead to worse health care – oh, right, NOBODY. “I’d rather be dead than in a wheelchair,” if you’ve said it, if you believe it, I don’t want you to be my doctor, I don’t want  you having anything to do with decisions about my life. — Read the rest, from the beginning, here.

Catherine Frazee is a disability rights activist, disability studies scholar and writer – to name but a few things people might want to know about her. Earlier this week, she wrote about what’s at stake for her and other disabled Canadians in “Assisted suicide debate masks disability prejudice.”:

But when I tune in today to watch the webcast of the case, I shall be standing not with Dying with Dignity, but with millions of Canadians with disabilities and their families — ordinary Canadians who have laboured for decades to secure a vision of equality, dignity and liberty that includes us all.

It’s that history that won the day in Canada’s internationally regarded Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. It’s that history that is at stake in this debate. — Read the rest – from the beginning – here.

Tom Koch is an author, lecturer and researcher – and a friend and ally of NDY and other opponents to assisted suicide/euthanasia. The CMAJ blog published an analysis Koch wrote of central issues in the Supreme Court debate over assisted suicide. Here’s an excerpt from “The Law and physician assisted dying: who owes what, to whom?”:

For most Canadians, the October 14 arguments at the Supreme Court in Ottawa will be about medical “aid in dying,” what the Dutch bluntly but accurately call physician assisted or directed termination. But what is really at stake in Carter et al. versus Attorney General et al is Canadian law itself, the meaning of its guarantees, promises, and injunctions. In effect, lawyers for and against “aid in dying” are asking the Supreme Court’s justices to interpret two sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. –Read the rest of this excellent analysis here.

This is not a comprehensive list – over the next day or two, we’ll share other important coverage and writings from our community and its allies.