Activist and Friend Judi Chamberlin Died This Weekend

blog recommendations, hospice, Judi Chamberlin, National Empowerment Center, Our News & Commentary Blog, psychiatric survivors

Late last Saturday night (January 16, 2010), Judi Chamberlin died at home, with family at her side.  This was not unexpected.  Judi has been receiving hospice services for over a year as a chronic lung condition worsened to the point where she decided to enroll in hospice services.  She shared her thoughts and experiences as a hospice patient on her blog, “Life as a Hospice Patient.”

Judi is best known as a pioneer in the psychiatric survivors’ movement – or “Mad Pride.”  Judi and and a handful of others grew a movement that challenged the notion that a psychiatric label was a justification for denial of basic human rights, and leaving individuals at the often not-so-tender mercies of mental health professionals.

Readers of this blog – especially outside of the disability community – might have noticed that NDY doesn’t devote a lot of discussion or recognition to psychiatric terminology.  We also (I hope successfully) steer clear of sanctioning forced psychiatric treatment as our answer to people with disabilities who want to kill themselves or want help doing it.

Judi Chamberlin had a lot to do with that approach.  Early on, she challenged those of us working in NDY to be careful not to answer one perceived injustice by advocating another.  She was right and I hope we’ve done our best to avoid those traps.

Like many people in and out of the movement, I will miss her.  It’s not that we talked that much, but I often felt her looking over my shoulder, making sure I didn’t screw it up.

For more information on Judi, including links to recent coverage about her, please visit the The National Empowerment Center.

There is a page devoted to all things Judi Chamberlin.  –Stephen Drake

A Disability Perspective on the Issue of Physician Assisted Suicide – Disability and Health Journal

American Public Health Association, analysis, assisted suicide, carol gill, diane coleman, Marilyn Golden, Mercatornet, Michael Cook, Our News & Commentary Blog, research

Several blogs wrote about this issue late last month when a press release announced the publication of an issue of the Disability and Health Journal dedicated to articles on assisted suicide and disability.  I held back from announcing the issue on this blog for one very important reason: A snafu resulted in the press release being issued before the journal in question was available online.

I’ve mentioned before that I love it when people save me time and work when it comes to writing.  Writer and editor Michael Cook has just published a summary of the contents of the journal issue on Mercatornet.com – along with some interesting commentary – in “Is Death Better than Disability?“:

When assisted suicide is legalised most of the people who will die are disabled. And American disability advocates take a very dim view of it. This is the theme of a hard-hitting series of articles in the latest issue of the Disability and Health Journal.

The editor, Suzanne McDermott, of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, writes that she changed her own mind after studying the issue. At first she believed that assisted suicide was solely a personal autonomy issue. But eventually she was persuaded that it is at the heart of the movement for disability rights: “Almost all people at the end of life can be included in the definition of ‘disability’. Thus, the practice of assisted suicide results in death for people with disabilities.”

The special issue is a response to a controversial 2008 decision by the American Public Health Association (APHA) to back “aid in dying” (ie, assisted suicide). This slipped almost completely under the media’s radar, but it means that the official policy of the “oldest, largest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world” – 30,000 of them – is to support assisted suicide to the hilt. Or, as they prefer to call it in Oregon, “patient-directed dying” or “physician aid-in-dying”.

Rather than worrying about some ambiguous language in the Obama administration’s health reform legislation or scrutinising the publications of his health advisors for a few indiscreet phrases, the elderly and their relatives ought to be worried about the 30,000 members of the APHA. They are the ones who could be sitting on the “death panels”. The authors of the articles in the Disability and Health Journal certainly are worried.

The journal issue has articles by authors familiar to readers of this blog.  Marilyn Golden, writing with Tyler Zoanni, provides a public policy analysis of assisted suicide and its impact on people with disabilities; Carol Gill deconstructs and rebuts some of the favorite “straw man” arguments used against disability activists who oppose legalization of assisted suicide; and NDY founder and president Diane Coleman, who gives a point-by-point rebuttal to the “Autonomy, Inc.” brief in Baxter vs. State of Montana. “Autonomy” is a pro-assisted suicide group. Its board is mostly people with disabilities. The group only seems to surface only when called upon to sign onto legal briefs or make a statement to the press related to assisted suicide legislation.

All of these articles are well worth reading.  The authors bring a wide range of experience and viewpoints in their explorations of the issues surrounding assisted suicide and euthanasia.

On a cautionary note, I would hope that academics, scholars and other professionals connected to disability take the lesson of the American Public Health Association to heart.  Most of the members of of the disability group within APHA had paid little attention to the intricacies of the assisted suicide debate until it was shoved on their plate.  This is likely to be a scenario that gets played out time and time again unless there is renewed interest in the debate from disability advocates.

In the end, these highly talented, committed and caring people lost the battle after an initial victory of stalling a vote on the decision to endorse assisted suicide for a year.  They had to learn everything about the debate from scratch while their opponents were unified, well organized and well-connected.

The consequences of that disadvantage can be seen even now in Gloria Krahn’s description of the struggle within the organization.  Among other things, she describes a “compromise” that was reached over terminology.  At the insistence of the Disability  Section members, “Death with Dignity” was rejected as a term for assisted suicide, but “aid in dying” was put in its place.

Those of us familiar with the marketing efforts of pro-assisted suicide advocates know that “aid in dying” is the preferred term promoted by the groups like Compassion & Choices.  Rather than being a “compromise,” this was just one aspect of the overall victory.  (Obviously, though, the rejection of “death with dignity” was a victory of sorts since the term has a direct bearing on people with disabilities, who get to be viewed as “undignified.”)

I don’t want that last word to get taken wrongly.  These individuals in the Disability Section of APHA did the best that could be expected under the circumstances.  Like everyone else connected to disability, they’re confronted with critical issues commanding a great deal of attention, especially in the current economic meltdown.

It’s time to recognize though, that this is one more critical issue for disability advocates, and maybe moreso because of the economic meltdown when people are looking for guilt-free ways to eliminate society’s “financial burdens.”

To access the journal issue, and its articles, go to this site.  For this issue only, there is no registration required.  It’s fitting, I think, to make a disability-themed journal issue so easily accessible.  –Stephen Drake.

Big News: Final Exit Network Activist Enters Guilty Plea in Arizona – Agrees to Testify Against Other Defendants

Arizona, crime and punishment, final exit network, media coverage, Our News & Commentary Blog

This could be very important news.  Wye Hale-Rowe, a long time assisted suicide activist and advocate, has entered a guilty plea in Arizona to a charge of “facilitation to commit manslaughter.”

The longest and most detailed coverage of Hale-Rowe’s plea is in the Phoenix New Times, an independent paper that originally broke the story of the investigation that led to the arrests of Hale-Rowe and three other individuals, all “exit guides” in the Final Exit Network.  The rest of the media in Arizona has treated this as almost a non-story.

From the New Times blog:

Readers may remember our story on the so-called “assisted case” of Jana Van Voorhis, a 58-year-old Phoenix woman who died mysteriously in her bed in the spring of 2007.

It was a particularly sad and bizarre yarn (even by our standards), and had a slew of dicey legal and ethical issues wrapped inside of it.

One of our key interviews in the piece was with Wye Hale-Rowe, then 79, a retired family therapist and great-grandmother who now lives in Michigan. She was then was a volunteer for the Final Exit Network, an offshoot of the now-defunct Hemlock Society.

Earlier today, Hale-Rowe pleaded guilty in Maricopa County Superior Court to facilitation to commit manslaughter, a felony.

In striking a plea deal with county prosecutors, Hale-Rowe agreed to testify against the three remaining defendants in the case, an aged Scottsdale man who allegedly also assisted Van Voorhis in killing herself, and two senior Final Exit officials from out of state.  (emphasis added.)

 The other defendants are facing charges of manslaughter and conspiracy to commit manslaughter.  This already had the potential of being a very interesting and revealing trial in regard to the Final Exit Network.  Van Voorhis had no significant health issues or physical disabilities.  I also was looking forward to how the “training manual” would be used as evidence in the trial – the manual allegedly tells “exit guides” they are “special people” and should work to reduce the ambivalence of people who want to commit suicide – and any family members involved.

Now we have Hale-Rowe copping a plea and agreeing to testify against her accomplices. 

Question: Will anyone besides the folks from the Phoenix New Times cover this trial?  –Stephen Drake

Montana Supreme Court Decision: A Non-Lawyer’s First Reaction

assisted suicide, court decisions, Montana, Our News & Commentary Blog

First, the Supreme Court Opinion in its entirety can be found at this site in PDF format.

As to a “constitutional right” and assisted suicide – the court avoided giving a ruling on that at all (but in doing so voided the lower court finding in that regard).  Instead, through some strange permutations in finding that there is nothing currently barring doctors from giving lethal prescriptions to “terminal” patients.

For a full understanding, you’ll have to read the opinion – opinions, actually.  There are two concurring opinions and one dissent.  Even then, if you’re not a lawyer, it will be a struggle.

Nevertheless, there are a few things that I can say about the court’s reasoning.  According to the court, Montana has a fairly broad application of the “consent” defense in questions of criminal activity.  Additionally, they totally dismantle any distinction between withholding/withdrawal of treatment and the giving of lethal medication.  (the dissent points out that the Supreme Court cases on assisted suicide in 1997 reaffirmed a significant distinction between omission and comission).

In doing these things, the court was able to ignore the existing statutes against assisting suicides, at least as it pertains to prescriptions of lethal medications given to patients by their doctors.  (For other reasons, I think they’ve also left the door open to a “consent” defense for elderly men who kill ailing wives – a growing phenomenon.)

The most disturbing part of the opinion is the “specially concurring” opinion by Justice James C. Nelson.  Nelson declares openly that he sees a constitutional right for assisted suicide, so that we all know at least one vote in any future challenges.  But he doesn’t stop there.  Nelson writes more like an unusually eloquent member of the Final Exit Network than a Supreme Court Justice:

Thus noted, the Patients and the class of individuals they represent are persons who suffer from an illness or disease, who cannot be cured of their illness or disease by and reasonably available medical treatment, who therefore expect death within a relatively short period of time, and who demand the right to preserve their personal autonomy and their individual dignity in facing this destiny.

In choosing this language, I purposely eschew bright-line tests or rigid timeframes.

What Nelson is signaling here, I believe, is that any challenge to a law that limits the practice of physician assisted suicide will find a friend in this Justice.

Justice Jim Rice wrote the dissent, which refutes most of the arguments in the Opinion itself – including the negation of long-standing statutory prohibitions on aiding suicides.  Perhaps most importantly, though, Rice thoroughly discusses the intent of elements of the Montana Constitution.  Among other things, he points out the significance of a “right to die” proposal being discussed and rejected for inclusion in the Montana constitution.  He argues it is hard to read an intent for the practice to be legalized when one knows the subject was discussed and rejected.

I’ll be writing more later.  There’s a lot of material in this decision and I still haven’t wrapped my head around it all.  For the most part, lawyers and judges are really really painful to read.

Needless to say, when once in awhile, someone says I “think like a lawyer” I guess that’s OK.  Just never accuse me of writing like one.  –Stephen Drake