Autistic Self Advocacy Network: “Our Lives are Worth Living”
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) has long opposed assisted suicide. This section on their website under “What We Believe” explains why:
“There are a lot of practices in medicine that discriminate against disabled people. Some hospitals won’t give organ transplants or other life-saving medical treatments to people with disabilities. They don’t see it as “worth the effort” to try to keep us alive. Some doctors even help disabled people die from suicide instead of trying to help save our lives. They might try to convince disabled people that suicide is the best option for us. ASAN believes disabled lives are worth living. Doctors need to focus on making our lives better instead of acting like we are better off dead.
Medical research can also treat disabled lives like they are worth less than non-disabled lives. An example of this is Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). QALYs try to calculate the “value” of each year of life based on what disabilities a person has. For example, the value of each year of a non-disabled person’s life is 1, but someone with a disability will always have a number that is less than 1. This measure isn’t fair to people with disabilities. Our lives have as much value as non-disabled people’s lives. Research should focus on how to accommodate us instead of devaluing us.”
The “Healthcare” section on this page has a lot of valuable insight about healthcare policies aligned with disability justice principles. You can read more here.
Anita Cameron: Don’t Be Fooled, Assisted Suicide IS Suicide
Suicide is devastating. Take it from someone who has lost dear friends to it. It’s an especially difficult death for families to deal with. Loved ones often feel guilt, wondering was there anything they could have done to prevent it. I, too, felt that horror and guilt after learning that a close friend had died by suicide hours after visiting me.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that suicide is a serious public health issue whose rates have increased approximately 36% between 2000–2021. It reports that suicide was responsible for 49,476* deaths in 2022.
Many resources exist to inform the public about suicide – what it is, it’s impact on the country and on certain communities, the signs to watch for and how to prevent it – but no resource addresses the state sanctioned suicide masquerading as health care, that proponents call medical aid in dying, but opponents call by its true name: assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide is a practice legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia, where a doctor, or in some states, a physician assistant, writes a prescription for a lethal drug that terminally ill patients – those with six months or less, to live – fill and subsequently take. No doctor or witness is required to be present, so no one would know if the medication was purposely taken or if the person was coerced or convinced to do so.
Proponents say that this is not suicide, but the Oxford Dictionary of English lists the definition of suicide as “the action of killing oneself intentionally.” Proponents refuse to call assisted suicide what it actually is, probably due to the stigma associated with suicide. One can call it all kinds of fancy terms that hide the truth, but don’t be fooled – assisted suicide IS suicide.
Though assisted suicide is supposedly only for those who are terminally ill, it’s hard to predict that, so doctors often make mistakes. There are countless stories of people living years or even decades beyond their doctors’ predictions.
Assisted suicide creates a two-tiered system where younger, healthier folks expressing thoughts of harming themselves are more likely to get mental health treatment whether they want it or not, while disabled people, who often lack access to such care, are more likely to have suicidal feelings rationalized, so are less likely to receive mental health treatment.
This is especially important when someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness. It’s normal to become depressed after such a diagnosis. Mental health counseling, along with other services and supports should be offered from the beginning and tailored to meet the person’s changing needs.
Proponents rename assisted suicide as “aid in dying” so it sounds like end of life care. However, it is not. End of life care is all of the services and supports, including pain management, that a person needs to be as comfortable as possible while the dying process takes place naturally. Assisted suicide is just that – suicide. Death. No care.
It’s said that access to housing, healthcare, clean water and food security is suicide prevention. Getting rid of assisted suicide as public policy is also suicide prevention.
*2022 Suicide statistics provided by WomenOnGuard.com
Belated Note: Diane Coleman’s Letter Published in Finger Lakes Times
[From August 28, 2023]
Assisted suicide in NY a poor idea
To the Editor:
It’s ironic that Joel Freedman’s Aug. 14 essay promoting assisted suicide laws opens by noting the need to “strengthen the rights of nursing home residents and other care-dependent people.” People are too often dumped into nursing facilities by hospitals and sometimes, sadly, by families, never to escape again, their choices taken away.
Yet Freedman’s article ignores that reality and claims that assisted suicide laws only operate in the context of individuals who can count on the privileges of loving families, covered healthcare treatments, and quality palliative care.
I’m a disabled person who uses a breathing mask and motorized wheelchair and just turned 70. I’m still working, partly to pay for the uncovered care I need. I know two individuals, both African American women, who dealt with severe pain for at least two years before doctors were forced to recognize their mistakes and take steps to address the damage done.
Studies on healthcare disparities demonstrate that the system cannot be trusted to provide equal treatments without regard to race, disability, or age. More specifically in the context of assisted suicide laws, doctors cannot reliably predict how long we have to live, nor are they privy to the family pressures to “get on with it” that may arise behind closed doors.
Doctors are gifted to be able to save lives, but there are too many failures and economic pressures in the healthcare system to add assisted suicide to the treatment list.
DIANE COLEMAN
Rochester [NY]
Mourning the Passing of Disability Rights Activist Lillibeth Navarro
NDY joins disability advocates in California and across the country in mourning the loss of disability rights activist and leader Lillibeth Navarro. The times I shared with Lillibeth are a treasured part of my life history. Remembering how deeply she touched people’s lives, I know that many would say the same thing.
Our story together began in 1987 when I returned to Los Angeles from my first national ADAPT action for accessible public transportation and decided to start an ADAPT chapter. Lillibeth was one of the first to join. Along with disability movement photographer Tom Olin, we rode in my van picking up fellow activists for meetings and protests, including the fall 1987 national ADAPT action in San Francisco. (I believe this action resulted in her first civil rights arrest.)
By next spring, Lillibeth helped organize a group of ten disabled people to join the national ADAPT action and carry our demands for accessibility to a North American transit conference being held in Montreal.
Our Los Angeles chapter also pushed the accessibility envelope at home, with street theater to get curb cuts on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame (aka “Walk of Shame”) and at least two arrest actions, one involving a sit-in at the Governor’s Office and one a protest at the Greyhound depot, among others. By the spring of 1989 when I left L.A., Lillibeth took over leadership of ADAPT Southern California.
As Executive Director of the CALIF center for independent living she founded, many came to Lillibeth for help in their struggles for equal rights and opportunities. A short video interview when she was honored as a Filipino Champion captures some of her gentle but firm style as an educator and advocate for change.
Those who live in California know more about her work that followed than I do, as the many tributes show. (See, e.g., Disability Rights CA) Attorney Michael Allen who worked with Lillibeth on an important housing case posted this tribute on a legal listserv:
Lillibeth Navarro: Disability Community Leader and Hero Passes Away
Lillibeth Navarro, the founding director of CALIF, died yesterday after a short illness. In many ways, she was the heart and soul of the “LA 504” housing accessibility case litigated by my firm, Disability Rights California, Disability Rights Legal Center and David Geffen. Lillibeth spent the last 30+ years insisting on community integration for people with disabilities in all aspects of life. The world is a better place for all of us because of her work….
Over the last decade, Lillibeth became part of my life again as she advocated against a public policy of assisted suicide, helping to communicate the real dangers of this policy to the disability community and the broader public. Like so many people with disabilities, Lillibeth saw and experienced healthcare disparities impacting members of BIPOC and disability communities, disparities that belie the empty platitudes about “safeguards” in assisted suicide laws.
She organized a protest against the Hollywood film “Million Dollar Baby” due to its assisted suicide theme. She fought alongside DREDF’s Marilyn Golden to oppose passage of the CA assisted suicide law and spoke movingly at a Sacramento rally focused on the dangers to people with disabilities.
