It’s (Long Past) Time for the U.S. To Ratify the United Nations Disability Treaty

CRPD - Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, disability rights, national council on independent living, Our News & Commentary Blog, united nations,

I want to pass on a message I received about activities tomorrow in support of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).  The rally is being sponsored by the National Council on Independent Living, one of NDY’s closest allies.  Here’s the information I received (excerpts):

PLEASE Call your Senators!  And join us at a Rally for the CRPD to let the Senate know we want this brought up for a floor vote NOW! 

When:
 July 29th, 12:15 pm

Where:
 3rd Street NW between Pennsylvania Ave NW and Maryland Ave SW

If you’re not located in DC, you can take part by visiting your Senators’ in-state offices and expressing your support for the CRPD!  You can also watch the rally via live video streaming online at https://bambuser.com/channel/USICD

New to the Disability Treaty? There’s a quick overview at http://disabilitytreaty.org/faq

And so this is a perfect time to remind people why NDY supports the CRPD.  From our blog a couple years ago:

The attention that the CRPD is receiving this week and next is a reminder of how important it is for the disability community to unite behind this groundbreaking treaty that has been years in the making.  I say “groundbreaking” not because it necessarily adds to U.S.law, as most say it does not, but because it demonstrates the worldwide significance of the disability community and disability rights.

That being said, let me point to some specific Articles of the CRPD that are relevant to Not Dead Yet’s goals.

First, there is Article 10, entitled “Right to life,” which does not carry exactly the same connotation and meaning that the phrase does in U.S.culture-war politics.  Article 10 simply states:

States Parties reaffirm that every human being has the inherent right to life and shall take all necessary measures to ensure its effective enjoyment by persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others.

Not Dead Yet’s concerns about futility policies, surrogate decision-making and assisted suicide all pertain to the notion that persons with disabilities have the same inherent right to live as everyone else.

CRPD Article 16 addresses “Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse.”  Article 16 begins by stating,

1. States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social, educational and other measures to protect persons with disabilities, both within and outside the home, from all forms of exploitation, violence and abuse, including their gender-based aspects. . . .

The Article goes on to call for related efforts toward abuse prevention, public education, reporting, victim support services, protection services, investigation of abuse and appropriate prosecution of abusers.

As we also know, persons with disabilities are more likely to experience abuse than their non-disabled peers.  This reality has a direct bearing on Not Dead Yet’s goals of ensuring that the civil rights of disabled people are protected from inappropriate surrogate decisions to withhold life-sustaining treatment, and of ensuring the equal protection of the law when disabled people are the victims of violence and even homicide.

Finally, CRPD Article 25 addresses “Health.”  The most relevant portions affirm essential principles of nondiscrimination in health care:

States Parties recognize that persons with disabilities have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to . . .

d) Require health professionals to provide care of the same quality to persons with disabilities as to others, . . . through training and the promulgation of ethical standards for public and private health care;

e) Prohibit discrimination against persons with disabilities in the provision of health insurance, . . . ;

f) Prevent discriminatory denial of health care or health services or food and fluids on the basis of disability.

Obviously, subsection “f” directly states Not Dead Yet’s goal to prevent the withholding of health care, and even food and fluids, on the basis of disability.  Sadly, we know that this happens in the U.S.and elsewhere.  Not Dead Yet has been talking about it for years, and this year our concerns were substantiated in a major Report from the National Disability Rights Network.  The CRPD won’t cure this injustice, but it will affirm that it is an injustice, and help establish that it is an international human rights issue.

The U.S. should ratify the CRPD, which has already been ratified by 117 other nations as of July 2012.  It won’t change U.S.law, given that disability rights consistent with the CRPD are already on the books here.  But it will provide global leadership on disability rights and help protect our disabled citizens abroad.  Moreover, it will affirm our nation’s commitment to our stated ideals of equality and justice for all.

Press Release: Not Dead Yet Advocates Against Oregon-Style Assisted Suicide Bill in the UK

Our News & Commentary Blog

[Editor’s Note: For a copy of this release in pdf format, including an attached copy of John Kelly’s letter to the House of Lords in Word format, please go to the PRWeb version here.]

Not Dead Yet USA today announced an advocacy and outreach effort to the British House of Lords, which is to debate an assisted suicide bill, HL 6, in Parliament on Friday, July 18. In addition to blogging and Twitter support, the group released an open letter to the House of Lords by Northeastern regional director, John Kelly.

“Over the past year, we have beaten back Oregon-style assisted suicide bills throughout the Northeast,” said John Kelly, “I wanted to share that experience with the House of Lords.”

“Bill 6, like the American bills, draws on shoddy science to create reckless public health policy,” wrote Kelly in the letter. The letter summarized the disability rights arguments against assisted suicide, with a list of problems including the impossibility of accurate diagnosis, the threat to depressed people, inevitable cost calculations, dangers for elderly people, and prejudice against disability.

Kelly wrote, “What we disabled people see in legalizing assisted suicide is that some people get suicide prevention, while others get suicide assistance, based on value judgments and prejudice.”

“We are joining our sister group Not Dead Yet UK and other advocates against this bill, which leaves vulnerable people unprotected,” said Not Dead Yet USA president Diane Coleman. Not Dead Yet UK plans to hold a rally on Friday at the House of Lords to voice opposition to the bill.

Not Dead Yet USA’s research analyst Stephen Drake blogged about UK proponents’ strategy of avoiding comparisons with the European countries with legalized euthanasia, such as Belgium, which has allowed euthanasia based on disability and has made children eligible as well.

“Instead,“ Drake wrote, “UK assisted suicide advocates have taken to pointing to the United States as a shining example of how assisted suicide can be contained and safeguarded.”

“People tend to forget that slippery slopes don’t just happen,” Drake said. “Incrementalist strategies – taking planned steps toward a desired result – are commonly called ‘slippery slopes,’ but they are really political advocacy working for partial victories toward a final policy goal.”

Bill HL 6 will either be defeated during the debate or, more likely, referred to a committee for more investigation.

Join Thunderclap to Support Not Dead Yet UK Rally Protesting Assisted Suicide Bill

Our News & Commentary Blog

This important message comes to us from Liz Carr of Not Dead Yet UK:

If you tweet, please sign up to our ‘Thunderclap’ to go off on Friday 18th July just before the House of Lords begins it’s debate on the ‘Assisted Dying Bill’. Please pass on and share! https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/13705-assisted-living-not-dying

Support Not Dead Yet UK Demonstration against Lord Falconer’s Bill 18th July 2014

Lord Falconer has resubmitted his bill to change the law on assisted dying. It will be debated in the House of Lords on the 18th of July. Not Dead Yet UK and several other supportive disability organisations are lobbing peers to ensure this bill is defeated.

  • We are deeply concerned that a change in the law will lead to disabled people – and other vulnerable people, including older people – feeling under pressure to end their lives.
  • The issue tells us a lot about public attitudes towards disabled people.
  • Why is it that when people who are not disabled want to commit suicide, we try to talk them out of it, but when a disabled person wants to commit suicide, we focus on how we can make that possible?
  • We believe that the campaign to legalise assisted suicide reinforces deep-seated beliefs that the lives of sick and disabled people are not worth as much as other people’s. That if you are disabled or terminally ill, it’s not worth being alive.

Disabled people want help to live – not to die.

***

 

Slippery Slopes, Political Realities and Comparing British Apples with American Oranges in Assisted Suicide Debate

assisted suicide, euthanasia, incrementalism, Our News & Commentary Blog, Tom Shakespeare, United Kingdom, , , , ,

On Friday, July 18, the British House of Lords will be considering Lord Falconer’s bill to legalize assisted suicide yet again.  Naturally, this has resulted in a real uptick in public debate on the topic, some of which we’ll share and discuss here later.

Right now, I want to focus on a strategy being used by pro-assisted suicide advocates in the UK.   Very aware that one major criticism of legalization of assisted suicide is expansion or “slippery slope” into making nonterminally ill, old and disabled people targets of the legislation.  Naturally, this has meant that advocates try to steer clear of discussing the Benelux countries, which have embraced the euthanasia of nonterminally ill people, people with depression, old people who say they’re tired of living and the euthanasia of “severely disabled” infants – in the Netherlands, children with Spina Bifida have been the main target of medical killing according to reports.  And of course most people are aware of the group Dignitas in Switzerland, whose eligibility criteria involves mostly the ability to pay hefty fees rather than any concern about the medical diagnosis of an individual.

Instead, UK assisted suicide advocates have taken to pointing to the United States as a shining example of how assisted suicide can be contained and safeguarded.  I found a very recent example from Tom Shakespeare. a disability scholar who has written some pretty unscholarly things about assisted suicide before.  He left a comment on Neil Crowther’s “Making Rights Make Sense” most recent post “Signal Failure,” which I recommend people go and read in its entirety.  Crowther notes that while the bill attempts to rigidly define the health status and prognosis in terms of “eligibility,” there is no concern regarding the motivations for one’s wish to commit suicide.  As he notes, they are NOT medical reasons for the most part:

If an objective of ‘assisted dying’ is – as Dignity in Dying argue – to relieve suffering, the suffering most cited relates to what people feel able to be or do and to their sense of self, rather than physical pain.  As such we must conclude that their motivations are not wholly intrinsic in nature.

People should be worried about this, he says:

It is true to say as did the recent British Medical Journal editorial in support of the Bill  that ‘That much mentioned victim—the elderly lady who believes she has become a burden to others and offers herself up for assisted dying—will not qualify’ under the Assisted Dying Bill.  But one does not need to be concerned that the Bill’s internal safeguards would fail to be worried about where the motivations to end ones life come from, the signal this Bill would send in the current context, accepting as it does that feeling a burden is sufficient reason to ask to be helped to end ones life, and the potential for the laws scope to expand to encompass such a scenario in future.

None of this is of concern to Shakespeare, who submitted a reply, which concluded this way:

And the example of Oregon is a counter-example to the slippery slope fear. There has been no widening. A tiny % of people choose to take advantage of the law. People are not pressured. It seems to work fine. Even militant pro-lifers cannot find much by way of “abuses” to criticise. Of course some people want a much wider law. But I cannot see them ever succeeding, you only have to look at the opposition to this Bill to realise how difficult it would be. There have been many attempts to pass this very limited assisted dying provision. I would oppose voluntary euthanasia for people who are not dying, and so would the majority, and I am confident that it would not happen in UK.

It’s not just “some people” who want a wider law – it’s the majority of “right to die” activists.  Without going into great detail here, you can find great material regarding problems with Oregon’s assisted suicide law in the policy section at DREDF under “assisted suicide.”  Check out “Spurious Safeguards,” Flimsy Reporting, No Regulation,” and “Pro-Suicide Doctors.”

Shakespeare, when looking to Oregon and the two other states in the US with laws legalizing assisted suicide, wants people to compare apples and oranges.  Remember that there are 50 states in the US, all of them with self-governing and autonomy separate from the federal Government.  You need to get a large number of states legalizing assisted suicide before having a chance for legalization on a national scale.  In contrast, if the UK legalizes assisted suicide, then the whole country is subject to the law in one fell swoop.

That’s an important difference when trying to predict what will happen in the UK.  When other whole countries – like the Netherlands and Belgium – have legalized assisted suicide and/or euthanasia, expansion of “eligibility” has proceeded pretty rapidly.

While US groups want expansion, they’ve left the model assisted suicide statutes alone for now, until that statute or ones like it are implemented in most of the states.  There’s still expansion though.  The Final Exit Network engages in underground vigilante “help” with assisted suicide for just about anyone who wants to end their lives. Compassion and Choices is aggressively marketing VSED – voluntary stopping eating and drinking – as a “peaceful” way for even nonterminally ill people to kill themselves.

I’m not just guessing at the agenda of assisted suicide groups.

In 2002, The Hastings Center Report published an article by Martin Gunderson and David J Mayo titled “Restricting Physician-Assisted Death to the Terminally Ill.” (article is scanned PDF and not accessible to those using screen readers)

David Mayo, the second author, isn’t just some disinterested researcher. At the time of the article’s publication, he was on the board of directors of the Hemlock Society.  Currently, he’s on the board of directors of both Death With Dignity National Center, and their related political fund.  You can read the organization’s mini-bio of Mayo here.

Mayo comes at this topic as someone with long years of significant involvement in national groups promoting assisted suicide in the US.  When he talks about an incrementalist approach, it’s something worth paying attention to.  From the Hastings Center article:

In light of the current paucity of evidence, however, it is reasonable to proceed incrementally and extend physician- assisted death initially only to terminally ill patients. Doing so will grant its benefits to those who as a group are most likely to benefit and for whom it would involve no more risk than do current medical practices at the end of life, while withholding it from those less apt to benefit and about whom there is greater controversy over potential risk. Finally, opting for the incremental approach will generate further data that can subsequently make possible a more reasonable assessment of the risk.

Without using the exact wording that’s used earlier in this article, the authors assert that many – including the authors – don’t believe assisted suicide eligibility to be limited to the “terminally ill,” but it’s a good place to start, and as part of an incrementalist approach to legalization. Their conclusion:

Thus the restriction of physician-assisted death to terminally ill patients should not necessarily be regarded as a permanent restriction. Our defense of the terminal illness requirement is based not on deep principle, but rather on risk assessment in the face of uncertainty. If physician-assisted death were extended to terminally ill patients, we could decide to stop there, retreat, or advance, depending on what we found out.

Considering that assisted suicide advocates in the US are claiming that assisted suicide laws have performed spectacularly, it’s clear they’ll start working to expand the laws as soon as they reach a critical mass of states legalizing assisted suicide. One of our jobs is to stop them from reaching that critical mass.

NDY Articles and Letters Published in NJ Press Kick Butt

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I don’t usually say “kick butt” and I’m pretty sure I’ve never written it before, but I couldn’t resist.  This blog is to catch you up on NDY articles and letters published recently in the New Jersey press.

You last heard from our hero John Kelly in our blog on June 19th, which featured John’s letter to the Times of Trenton, responding to a column in favor of the NJ assisted suicide bill.

We had been concerned that John’s letter might not be published, so I had fired one off too, figuring that more letters increase the likelihood that at least one will be published.  As things turned out, my letter was also published on June 22nd, but with a very objectionable title:

Introduce patient safeguards into assisted suicide bill

George Amick’s column about the New Jersey assisted suicide bill mentions the bill’s vaunted safeguards, but a closer look shows they are hollow. For example, Mr. Amick says that the form to request assisted suicide requires “two witnesses, at least one of them a nonrelative, attesting that the applicant is competent and acting voluntarily.” What he doesn’t mention is that the witnesses don’t actually have to know you, but can simply verify your I.D. How does a stranger know if you are being coerced behind closed doors?

Mr. Amick also says that the doctor writes “a prescription for a lethal dose of barbiturates for the patient to self-administer when — and if — he or she decided to do so.” But the bill doesn’t have any safeguards after the doctor writes the lethal prescription. From that point forward, the greedy heir or stressed-out caregiver can pick up the script and administer it with or without consent. With no witness required at the death, there’s no way to know whether it was self-administered.

Competent lawyers wrote this law, and the emptiness of the safeguards is no accident. It was never meant to protect the patient, just the doctors and other participants in the death.

Diane Coleman, J.D., 
Rochester, N.Y.
The writer is president/CEO of Not Dead Yet

To be clear, I do not believe that assisted suicide safeguards can be crafted that would protect individuals (“patients”) from the risks these laws pose.

Back to our hero, John.  We had learned about online sites that tend to be followed by liberal and progressive legislators in New Jersey, so on June 25th John posted what is called a “diary” in bluejersey.com called “Assisted Suicide Is Not Progressive”.

John made several key points, such as:

Supporters of A2270 say that it is all about “autonomy,” but in reality the bill would limit choice, because it incentivizes insurers to restrict, or even deny, coverage. In today’s cost-cutting environment, where health-care options are limited, many people already struggle. A2270 would make it worse.

That same afternoon, we got the surprise announcement that the bill would be brought up on the Assembly floor for a vote the next day.  John had been working on a longer op-ed for a couple days, so he moved into high gear and submitted it to politickernj.com.  John’s piece de resistance was published the next day!  So, the very day of the vote, legislators saw it in one of their main news resource outlets.  Then, just to be sure, people on our side of the issue copied and distributed it to all legislators.

Entitled “Assisted Suicide:  Just Too Dangerous”, it begins:

No matter how many amendments get added to the assisted suicide bill, A2270, whether for a prettier name  (out goes “Death With Dignity,” in comes “Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill”) or for a changed-then-changed-back-again definition of “terminal illness,” the bill is too dangerous.

(It’s well worth a full read.)  As a result of tremendous work done by the broad coalition of groups in the New Jersey Alliance Against Doctor Prescribed Suicide, the sponsor stated that he was two votes short of the number needed for passage, so he withdrew the bill and no vote was taken.

In interviews, the sponsor also claimed that the bill’s opponents were being emotional rather than looking at the “facts of the bill” (‘Aid in Dying’ bill, lacking enough votes, pulled from NJ Assembly agenda), a theme picked up by the Star Ledger’s editorial, which absurdly claimed that the sponsor “pulled the bill before a vote so he could soothe opponents’ fears — which he said were ‘genuine’ but fueled by emotion.”

If I had a nickel for every time that proponents of assisted suicide bills attributed our opposition to fear of death or other forms of emotionality, NDY would be able to attend all those fancy conferences that proponents use to hob nob with influential professionals and policy makers.  I was just a teensy bit irritated by yet another such accusation, especially coming from an editorial board of a prominent paper, so I pushed back with a letter to the editor to provide some “clarification.”

My letter was published July 1st.  It appeared under a photo of a patient and medical professional, accurately captioned “The writer argues that New Jersey legislators have a duty to set aside emotion and think about seriously ill people who need the law to protect them. (Denis Farrell/Associated Press).”  Here is my letter:

Too many loopholes on NJ’s assisted-suicide bill

When it comes to emotion as a barrier to reason, assisted suicide’s proponents have a much bigger problem than opponents (“Wise to wait on assisted suicide,” editorial, June 30). But that’s understandable.

Based on their hearing testimony, many saw a loved one die in pain. I was angry, too, when my father’s oncologist left him in pain, until he finally turned to hospice and got the palliative care he needed. But whether his doctor was guilty of ignorance, carelessness or arrogance, that’s not a reason to change the law on assisted suicide.

Recent amendments to Assemblyman John Burzichelli’s “Aid in Dying” bill have not changed the primary reasons to oppose it. Terminal predictions are still unreliable. Treatable depression is still not addressed. One witness to the form can be an heir, and neither need to actually know the patient. Nothing stops any form of coercion or caregiver abuse outside the doctor’s office. There’s no independent witness at the time of death, so self-administration is still not assured. And there are still no enforcement provisions.

The bill doesn’t prevent abuse; it hides it. Legislators have a duty to set aside emotion and think about seriously ill people who don’t have a loving family and need the law to protect them.

Diane Coleman, president and CEO, Not Dead Yet, Rochester, N.Y.

New Jersey’s bill can be brought up for a vote again in the fall, so our work is not done, but at least we can pause and celebrate that our message got out there.