New Vlog! LGBTQ+ and Disability Pride Special: Ableist Anti-Trans Laws

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Video Link: https://youtu.be/s6S5cD3_UPo

CW: ableism, suicide, transphobia

As we move from LGBTQIA+ Pride month to Disability Pride Month, we explore an important intersection currently facing disabled transgender people: access to gender affirming care being denied on the basis of disability. We chat with Jen Insight, a trans writer and video creator, about gender affirming care. We also talk to Larkin Taylor-Parker, Litigation Director at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, about the details of this discriminatory legislation. Finally, we discuss how these laws increase the risk of suicidality in trans disabled people and how a policy of assisted suicide increases that risk even more.

All sources used and mentioned in this episode can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TQQcdHLT4DIRqvZlE3cd8c_Y81lFx60OuYSuSP2GMIQ/edit?usp=sharing

Follow Jen Insight @jen_insight on Twitter and Instagram and  @jeninsight  on YouTube. Follow the Autistic Self Advocacy Network @autselfadvocacy on Twitter and @autisticselfadvocacy on Instagram.

Unfortunately the transcript for this episode came through without any punctuation, which makes it difficult to read. The video is fully captioned with correct punctuation.

Disability Activists Take Direct Action To Resist Assisted Suicide Laws

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By Jules Good

On June 14th, NDY and Second Thoughts MA activists gathered at the Massachusetts State House to show opposition to a Compassion and Choices rally. The group made signs and held them up at the back of Nurses Hall, where C&C was hosting a lineup of local speakers before dispersing to meet with legislators to lobby for the passage of H.2246/S.1331 which would legalize assisted suicide in MA. Selected photos and descriptions are below.

STMA member Pamela Daly, as well as NDY’s Assistant Director and Policy Analyst Jules Good, were interviewed by the press. Pam’s interview was featured here, and State House News mentioned our presence and signs here.

Massachusetts’ legislative session moves much more slowly than in other states, so hearings for these bills may not happen for a few more months. We will continue to be in touch with MA legislators to ensure these bills do not pass through committee.

Do you live in MA and want to get involved with this important advocacy work? Reach out to John Kelly, Director of STMA and New England Regional Director for NDY, at secondthoughtskelly@gmail.com .

Seated Signs: left to right, seated: Pam Daly, a white woman with shoulder length hair in a manual wheelchair Ellen Leigh, a white woman in a power wheelchair with shoulder length hair, a mask and eyeglasses, Finn Gardiner, a black man with beard, glasses and a black hat, John Robinson (standing behind), a white man in a green shirt and light slacks with glasses and a facemask, side-view of John Kelly, a balding white man in a power wheelchair with a "Not Dead Yet" T-shirt and a sign. Ellen's sign reads: "Secular Progressive against Assisted Suicide." John's sign says, "it's all about disability and unmet needs: lack of access to home care / healthcare inequities/structural racism / societal ableism. "
Second Thoughts Massachusetts Protesters
Finn Gardiner, a black man with beard, glasses, and a black hat seated holding up a sign reading "we don't need to die to have dignity."
Protester sign reads “we don’t need to die to have dignity.”
L-R, rear, Jules Good holding sign "No health care equity/No real choice/No assisted suicide.", Don Summerfield, a white man in a broad white hat (partially obscured by speaker at podium in foreground) holding obscured sign, and Jess with sign "protect disabled lives!" Foreground: woman speaking at podium, which has sign reading "alleviate suffering/patient choice / strong safeguards"
Disabled protesters hold signs behind pro-assisted suicide speaker

Photo Descriptions:

Seated Signs: left to right, seated: Pam Daly, a white woman with shoulder length hair in a manual wheelchair Ellen Leigh, a white woman in a power wheelchair with shoulder length hair, a mask and eyeglasses, Finn Gardiner, a black man with beard, glasses and a black hat, John Robinson (standing behind), a white man in a green shirt and light slacks with glasses and a facemask, side-view of John Kelly, a balding white man in a power wheelchair with a “Not Dead Yet” T-shirt and a sign. Ellen’s sign reads: “Secular Progressive against Assisted Suicide.” John’s sign says, “it’s all about disability and unmet needs: lack of access to home care / healthcare inequities/structural racism / societal ableism.”

Finn Gardiner, a black man with beard, glasses, and a black hat seated holding up a sign reading “we don’t need to die to have dignity.”

L-R, rear, Jules Good holding sign “No health care equity/No real choice/No assisted suicide.”, Don Summerfield, a white man in a broad white hat (partially obscured by speaker at podium in foreground) holding obscured sign, and Jess with sign “protect disabled lives!” Foreground: woman speaking at podium, which has sign reading “alleviate suffering/patient choice / strong safeguards”

NY Disability Activists Hold Counter-Presence At Pro-Assisted Suicide Press Event

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Alex Thompson and Max Rodriguez from the NY Association on Independent Living and Center for Disability Rights, respectively, held a counter-presence with signs opposing the NY assisted suicide bill at a press conference conducted today by proponents of the bill. They spoke with several members of the press about the dangers the bill poses for people with disabilities (see written statement below).

The first coverage appeared on WXXI News:

Opponents, including some advocacy groups for people with disabilities, said they fear the measure could be abused.

Alex Thompson with the New York Association of Independent Living said people with disabilities are sometimes misdiagnosed by doctors. He said he worries that could lead some to take their own lives based on an inaccurate prognosis.

“One of the major issues is that it puts the lives of people with disabilities at risk,” Thompson said. “And a lot of the discussion around the issue kind of overlooks the impact on people with disabilities.”

The activists also distributed a Statement consisting of a letter to Senate and Assembly majority leaders. The following are excerpts of that message:

The bill is unacceptable for a wide range of reasons.

First, this bill would likely lead patients to take their own lives based upon inaccurate prognoses. The bill bases eligibility for assisted suicide on a physician’s prognosis that a given patient has no more than six months to live. However, studies show that physicians’ survival estimates for terminally-ill patients are often inaccurate. If assisted suicide were made legal in New York, a patient who received an overpessimistic prognosis might take his or her own life when he or she might otherwise have outlived that prognosis by a substantial period of time. This very real possibility should be unacceptable to all New Yorkers.

…Fifth, assisted suicide laws normalize assisted suicide as an acceptable response to disability. Persons with serious chronic or terminal illnesses often become disabled as their diseases progress. Health professionals and others may incorrectly perceive that those patients have less “quality of life” than healthier persons do. While the rest of society receives suicide prevention education and services from the state, this bill would direct suicide assistance toward certain disabled individuals. This double standard is a form of discrimination against persons with disabilities. Furthermore, an assisted suicide law could cause patients that need assistance with daily living to feel pressured physically, emotionally, and financially to choose suicide.

To read the whole Statement, go HERE.

The Nation Magazine Features NDY & Disability Opposition To Assisted Suicide Laws

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The In the News page on the NDY website links to print and broadcast news pieces that include interview quotes or other mentions of Not Dead Yet or our disability allies. The vast majority of articles and broadcasts are about assisted suicide laws. The pattern, with rare exception, is that the attention on the disability perspective is a tiny fraction of the total piece.

That said, Sara Luterman’s article in The Nation, a magazine founded by abolitionists in 1865 and described as a “progressive American biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis,” is an incredible breakthrough. Entitled “Can Americans Really Make a Free Choice About Dying?“, Luterman’s piece tells the story of disability opposition to assisted suicide laws to progressives who have previously almost exclusively heard about conservative opponents. We hope our message will be heard.

Some quotes:

Disabled bodies are regarded with a sort of fetishistic curiosity at best and revulsion at worst. And people with disabilities are frequently not given the resources they need to live or the assistance they need to participate fully in society. The poverty rate for disabled people is more than double that of nondisabled people, and the unemployment rate for disabled people is more than double that of nondisabled people. The responsibility for care that is shirked by the state frequently falls on families, who are overwhelmed. Instead of being given the resources they need to thrive, many, if not most, people with disabilities are treated like expensive burdens.

Considering all of that, advocates ask, how could a disabled person’s decision to die be considered a free choice? It is not the disabilities that ruin lives, they say; it is the system and society that fails to support disabled people. “It’s not religious, nor is it pro-life,” said Diane Coleman, the president of Not Dead Yet, speaking of the advocacy movement. “It’s about going up against a ‘better dead than disabled’ mindset.”

[Anita] Cameron is an out and proud Black lesbian. She shared her thoughts on the “strange bedfellows” that the disability rights movement has made with the religious right on the subject of medical aid in dying. “The people I work with on a regular basis on this issue? A lot of them would not have me in their home,” Cameron said. “They would not eat dinner with me. They are diametrically opposed to my very existence. And yet somehow, we have managed to put that aside.”

The alliance is not without tension, but Cameron … sees it as part of a fight for survival: “We know how the medical community mistreats us. They want to get rid of us. If you’re sick, you can be pushed into assisted suicide…. As marginalized people, we see the discrimination we go through at the hands of the medical establishment.”

Jules Good, 23, is the assistant director of Not Dead Yet. They are autistic, deaf, and have a complex chronic illness. …”When I was 18, I got a pretty rough diagnosis. I was super depressed and attempted suicide. And when I went to my first counseling appointment with a new therapist after that happened, I explained my whole deal. And she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Yeah, I’d probably kill myself if I were you,'” Good told me….

Like Cameron, Good is uncomfortable with the alliance that the movement has built with the pro-life movement. When asked if it was difficult to work with these groups as a trans person, Good said …, “As much as I struggle sometimes with people who would probably prefer I wasn’t around, the goal of protecting people from dangerous legislation outweighs that for me, personally.”…

To read the whole article, go HERE.

 

Excellent Op-Ed by Disability Activist Daniese McMullen-Powell Published in Delaware

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Physician-assisted suicide discriminates against persons with disabilities

Daniese McMullin-Powell

May 23, 2023

Assisted suicide is a dangerous public policy that threatens the most vulnerable in society, especially people like me – people with disabilities. Upon initial consideration, many do not see how assisted suicide is particularly dangerous to the disability community. However, based on the weakening of the already-flimsy safeguards that is going on in other states that allow the deadly practice, the danger of abuse in assisted-suicide laws is real. I urge the Delaware Legislature to take a hard look at the facts of assisted suicide and to propose laws that help address the reasons people seek assisted suicide in the first place.

Assisted-suicide laws are inherently discriminatory and target people with disabilities. These laws lead to abuse and harm because the so-called safeguards within assisted-suicide laws are weak. According to a study published by the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, the safeguards in assisted-suicide laws are ineffective, and oversight of abuses and mistakes is absent. People with disabilities already face an uphill battle trying to receive fair treatment in a society that equates functionality with worth. It makes no sense to add to the disability community’s list of worries by legalizing a practice that would inevitably lead to abuse.

Alarmingly, in Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal the longest, the safeguards that proponents used to pass assisted-suicide legislation are now being weakened and characterized as barriers. Originally, Oregon had a 15-day waiting period in its law, which was valuable because it gave patients time to reflect and seek a second medical opinion. After all, assisted suicide is not a reversible decision. However, in 2020, Oregon removed the 15-day waiting period for patients whose physicians believed they would die before the end of the 15-day waiting period. Last year, 20% of patients received the waiver, and some even died on the same day that they requested assisted suicide. This same-day suicide assistance doesn’t give patients time to seek a second opinion, or even to change their minds. Once legalized, there is always a push to make suicide more accessible. In truth, there are no safeguards that could adequately protect vulnerable people from abuse and harm due to assisted suicide. Even so, to remove existing safeguards, no matter how flimsy, would be foolish.

Assisted-suicide policy fails to address the primary reasons that drive people to seek it in the first place. Proponents claim that people seek assisted suicide to avoid unbearable pain at the end of life. However, this is simply untrue. According to data from Oregon, people most often cite disability-related concerns as their reason for seeking assisted suicide. Their top reasons include loss of autonomy, decreasing ability to participate in life activities and loss of dignity. These are serious concerns that people in the disability community live with every day. Instead of legalizing assisted suicide, society should focus on educating, and removing the stigma surrounding disability. We should focus on providing better care because the above concerns are all treatable with appropriate, multi-disciplinary care. If legalized, assisted suicide sends the wrong message to people with disabilities: You’re better off dead than alive.

As a result, assisted suicide is a deadly public policy that puts people with disabilities at greater risk for abuse and harm. The so-called safeguards in assisted suicide laws are flimsy at best and have been found ineffective at protecting patients from abuse. In states where assisted suicide is already legal, there are incremental steps being made to lessen what little safeguards are in place. At the end of the day, this confirms what we’ve always known: Assisted suicide is about fear of disability. I want to encourage our Delaware Legislature to educate the public and reduce the stigma around disability. The people of Delaware deserve quality medical care and supports at all stages of life, not a premature death.

Daniese McMullin-Powell is a disability advocate who lives in Newark.