From John B. Kelly, Executive Director – Second Thoughts Massachusetts

www.second-thoughts.org

617-536-5140

John.B.Kelly@verizon.net

We thank the cross disability, and mental health recovery communities for powerful and effective testimony against assisted suicide.  As assisted suicide goes down for the second time in two years, disability rights advocates are taking up the leading positions against assisted suicide.

Disability rights voices are now undeniable in the battle against assisted suicide, we join with medical societies and hospice associations against assisted suicide.

We thank the Joint Committee on Public Health for hearing our concerns on how dangerous assisted suicide is to ill and disabled people.  That’s twice in two years now that first voters and now the legislature has had second thoughts about assisted suicide.  Massachusetts is rightly seen as a leader in social issues, and its solid rejection of assisted suicide should be heard across the nation.

Disabled who experience depression can breathe easier, who might be depressed and feeling hopeless, or in an abusive situation.

A similar effort in the New Hampshire Legislature was also recently defeated.

As many of our readers know, Not Dead Yet has a close relationship with ADAPT, the grassroots disability activist group that is fighting for our right to stay in our own homes and not be forced into nursing facilities (we don’t call them nursing “homes” because they are not homes) and other institutions.  I hope you’ve seen the ADAPT/NDY ad in Times Square.  Even though long term care in people’s homes is less costly to the taxpayer than sticking people in nursing facilities, ADAPT has been fighting for 24 years to change entrenched public policies and win our right to freedom.

ADAPT won a major victory with the enactment of the Community First Choice Option, a Medicaid long term care option.  Now the focus is on getting each state to choose the CFC Option and implement it.  In New York, we are almost there, with the Governor and state Senate ready to go, but the Assembly is blocking a needed amendment to state nursing laws.

Today, ADAPT activists from NDY’s headquarters in Rochester have travelled to the state capitol to once again push for our freedom.  Not Dead Yet is with them in spirit, and calls on the disability community and our allies to join in supporting them.  To send a message to the NY Assembly, go here.

John Kelly, Not Dead Yet’s regional director for the New England states, and disability activists from Second Thoughts Connecticut will be testifying today in Hartford against an assisted suicide bill, HB 5326.  Sporting stickers saying “Got Second Thoughts?”, members of Second Thoughts Connecticut held a press conference last Friday to explain the reasons for their opposition to the bill.

Disability activists have received increasing attention to their opposition stance since forming the Second Thoughts Connecticut organization.  Modeled after the Massachusetts group of the same name, which was instrumental in defeating an assisted suicide ballot referendum in that state in 2012, the group says that a closer look at the details of assisted suicide proposals give people “second thoughts.”

“The bill would establish a government recommendation that doctor-prescribed suicide is sometimes the best treatment,” said Kelly.  “Innocent people who are not terminal and are not making a voluntary and informed choice will lose their lives as a result.”

According to Oregon’s assisted suicide reports, 97.6% of program suicides in Oregon have been white, in a state 22% nonwhite.  “Assisted suicide proponents are also overwhelmingly white,” said Kelly.  “The Pew Research Center found last year that, while whites support assisted suicide 53%-44%, black and Latino voters register 65% opposition.  The election map for Question 2 in Massachusetts revealed these same trends.”

Cathy Ludlum is a disability activist who has given presentations to several groups, including the Human Rights and Responsibilities Section of the Connecticut Bar Association, about the assisted suicide issue.    “Contrary to what you will hear from proponents, people do not generally ask to end their lives because they can’t escape from the pain,” Ludlum told the bar association members.  The suicide factors identified in the Oregon assisted suicide reports, “perceived loss of autonomy, loss of dignity, and decreasing ability to be active are completely disability issues,” she said.  Ludlum uses a motorized wheelchair and employs personal care attendants to assist her in activities of daily living.  “Why do some people equate needing help with basic bodily functions to a loss of dignity?” Ludlum asks.  “If people are literally dying from embarrassment, there is something wrong.”

Second Thoughts member Stephen Mendelsohn criticized the stickers from the bill’s proponents, which say “My Life. My Death. My Choice.”  “They don’t care about all of the collateral damage assisted suicide legislation causes,” Mendelsohn said.

Mendelsohn described several aspects of the bill that concern him but, he said, fail to concern proponents.  Referring to the issue of suicide contagion, “Rep. Betsy Ritter is quoted in the Yale Daily News saying ‘her research team found no rise in states that have right-to-die laws,’” said Mendelsohn.  “But according to the Centers for Disease Control, Oregon’s already high suicide rate has increased much faster than the national average from 1999 through 2010—49% versus 28% for ages 35-64.”

Mendelsohn also stated that “HB 5326 is a prescription for elder abuse on a massive scale. . . . The law protects greedy heirs and Compassion and Choices simply doesn’t care.”

Every year in Connecticut, it is estimated that out of 660,000 people over age 60, there are 73,000 reported and unreported cases of abuse.  Connecticut has a poor record in this area – 32^nd out of 35 states surveyed in funding, and fifth worst in number of “substantiated” complaints.

At the conclusion of Friday’s press conference, WTNH reported that Second Thoughts member Elaine Kolb of West Haven was “singing the battle cry of the disability rights movement against the latest version of the assisted suicide bill.”  Her song, entitled “Not Dead Yet” after the national disability group, included lyrics about cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and services, indicating a cost cutting fear:  “Since death is cost-effective, Do you want us dead or alive?”

[Editor’s Note:  For the PRWeb version of this release, in pdf format, with a photo of Cathy Ludlum and testimonies attached, please go here.]

As part of a nation-wide Day of Mourning, Not Dead Yet will be among disability activists in 23 U.S. cities holding vigils on Saturday, March 1, 2014 to honor the lives of disabled people murdered by their families and caregivers.

Over 40 such murders have been reported in the United States in the last five years, ten in the last year alone. In the year since the last Day of Mourning, the national disability community has lost at least ten more victims. In January of 2014 alone, two more people with disabilities were lost in murder-suicides at the hands of their parents:  Damien Veraghen, age nine, and Vincent Phan, age twenty four. The total number of killings is likely higher than the number reported in news media. In addition, this count does not include elder homicides which which often involve elders who also have disabilities.

In a horrifying trend, parents and caregivers, those whom one should be able to trust most, are committing murder against people with disabilities in their care. We must address violence against people with disabilities and speak out against the dangerous cultural prejudice that says a disabled life is not worth living.

The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, Not Dead Yet, and the National Council on Independent Living held the first Day of Mourning in 2012 as a response to the murder of George Hodgins, a 22-year-old autistic man from California, by his mother.

Little public attention is paid to the disabled victims of these violent acts. Media coverage and public discourse about such killings frequently seems to justify them as “understandable” and sometimes “merciful,” rather than appropriately condemning these crimes and those who commit them.

“Researcher Dick Sobsey has documented an increase in the murders of children by their parents in Canada in relation to well-publicized and sympathetic coverage of the murders of children with disabilities,” said Stephen Drake, Not Dead Yet’s research analyst. “Articles about the alleged murder of a person with a disability should not contain more about the disability than about the victim as a person. More space should be devoted to grieving family members than sympathetic friends of the accused killer.”

The National Day of Mourning is a time for the disability community to commemorate the many lives cut short. By honoring disabled victims of murder and celebrating the lives that they lived, these events send a message that disability is not a justification for violence.

The Rochester vigil will be held at the Center for Disability Rights at 497 State Street, and begins at 1:00 p.m. Speakers will include both Diane Coleman and Stephen Drake of Not Dead Yet, which is headquartered in Rochester and a co-sponsor of the national Day of Mourning effort.

[Editor’s Note:  For a PRWeb version of this release in pdf format, go here.]