Mike Reynolds: New Hampshire Bill Promotes Assisted Suicide for “Embarrassing Indignities”

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Published in today’s Union Leader —

Your Turn, NH – Mike Reynolds:

FOR OVER two decades the independent people of New Hampshire have been solidly against assisted suicide. Since 1996, the New Hampshire legislature has studied or voted down this proposed law so many times it takes two hands to count them all.

Assisted suicide laws are the most egregious form of discrimination against severely disabled and “terminally ill” people. How can we call suicide a public health crisis for most people while facilitating the suicides of older, ill and disabled people? Should we not be doing everything we can to support such persons in having the best possible health care and home care so they have quality of life for however long they have?

With the experience of the laws in Oregon as a guide, the question of assisted suicide becomes, quite frankly, incompatible with New Hampshire values. [The] state motto, “Live Free or Die,” means we reject government interference in our daily lives. Oregon state government’s promotion of an assisted suicide program administered by the health care system means pushing people towards assisted suicide through denials of coverage for treatment and in-home care, covering up abuses, and ignoring incorrect prognoses that lead people to think they are dying when they are not.

The numerous flaws in HB 1659, the “Death with Dignity Act,” are so obvious that New Hampshire should reject this absurd legislation again. With HB 1659, the government would be promoting suicide for what in the preamble it calls “mental anguish over the prospect of losing control and independence, and/or embarrassing indignities.” This is a direct attack on the thousands of disabled Granite Staters who maintain their independence and dignity by directing aides to perform their care.

While assisted suicide proponents depict assisted suicide as only a last resort for people with advanced cancer, Oregon’s doctors have written lethal prescriptions for individuals whose qualifying medical diagnosis for assisted suicide was reported as chronic conditions like diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, arthritis, arteritis, sclerosis, stenosis, kidney failure, and musculoskeletal systems disorders.

As in Oregon, under bill HB1659 a person can be considered “terminal” and therefore eligible for assisted suicide simply by refusing medication they need. By that definition, people who have epilepsy, ongoing infections and other illnesses that can be managed with medication can qualify. This legislation is not limited in scope and is actually far more dangerous than the proponents want to admit.

A report released in May 2018 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that from 1999-2010, suicide among those aged 35-64 increased 49% in Oregon as compared to a 28% increase nationally. In Oregon, the rate of suicide is 21 percent above the national average and their rates of teen suicide have even been higher. There is a clear problem of suicide contagion.

While the bill proponents claim there are safeguards, there is absolutely no oversight once the medication is picked up from the pharmacy. Under the Oregon law and the proposed legislation, a “friend” can encourage an elder to make the assisted suicide request (“just in case”), sign the forms as a witness, pick up the prescription, and even administer the drug (since no independent witness is required). To be perfectly clear, the current bill being debated only discusses “self-administration” of the lethal drugs in the bill’s preamble; nowhere in the substantive provisions is the word mentioned.

This law is also vague about who can access it, but it would be far easier for an eighteen year old with a serious medical condition that could be controlled with medication to access this law than it would for the same eighteen-year-old to access cigarettes or alcohol.

There is nothing compassionate or caring in this bill. Instead it could serve as a template to encourage and even pressure the most vulnerable in our society, our older and critically ill populations, to hasten their deaths. And by giving legal immunity to everyone involved, it creates a legal framework where elder abuse (up to and including homicide), which nationally impacts about 10% of elders, gets a free pass. Please contact your legislators and have them oppose this very dangerous legislation.

Mike Reynolds is a member of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group opposed to assisted suicide.

NDY’s Anita Cameron Joins NH Disability Advocates To Oppose Assisted Suicide Bill

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Not Dead Yet, the Resistance
Press Release

Contacts:  John Kelly 617-952-3302; Anita Cameron 585-259-8746

(Manchester, NH) – Not Dead Yet’s director of minority outreach, Anita Cameron, will join disability rights leaders from the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire, ABLE New Hampshire, Disability Rights Center and other state and local groups to oppose a New Hampshire assisted suicide bill, HB 1659, being heard before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, February 12 at 1:00 p.m.

Head and shoulders photo of Anita Cameron, an African American woman with long dreadlocks and brown sweater.

Cameron was among scores of disability activists arrested during national protests by disabled people to save Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in 2017. Among other issues, Cameron will share the story of her mother’s mistaken “terminal” diagnosis in her testimony against the NH assisted suicide bill.

“In June, 2009, while living in Washington state, my mother was determined to be in the final stages of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and placed in hospice. Two months later, I was told that her body had begun the process of dying. My mother wanted to go home to Colorado to die, so the arrangements were made. Once she got there, her health began to improve! Over ten years later, she is still alive, lives in her own home in the community and is reasonably active.”

John Kelly, director of Second Thoughts and NDY’s New England regional director, will submit written testimony. “We renounce the implication in this bill that some people are ‘better dead than disabled,’” he states. “Either everyone has equal amounts of dignity or we no longer live in a society where everyone is equal under the law.”

The bill’s purpose statement focuses on disability concerns as a reason for implementing assisted suicide: “Many terminally ill patients experience severe, unrelenting suffering, mental anguish over the prospect of losing control and independence, and/or embarrassing indignities for long periods while they are waiting to die . . ..”

NDY’s president and ceo will also submit written testimony. “As a severely disabled person who depends on life-sustaining treatment, the Statement of Purpose in HB 1659 makes it crystal clear that someone like me would be viewed as sitting right in the bill’s crosshairs.”

Disability Advocates Show Up to Oppose Evanston City Council Assisted Suicide Resolution

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Patients Rights Action Fund shared the following press advisory sent as disability advocates show up to oppose Evanston City Council assisted suicide resolution:

Tonight, the Evanston City Council will debate and vote on the issue of assisted suicide.

Below are statements from disability rights advocates who oppose assisted suicide if you are planning to cover this.

“Disability advocates nationwide have long opposed assisted suicide legislation as presenting a false choice in how to live or die. Data shows that the vast majority of those who request assisted suicide are in fact disabled people. The sad fact remains that assisted suicide is a loophole for abuse and lack of supports for people with disabilities. Because the Illinois social services system is broken and underfunded, our efforts should focus on investing in home and community based supports.” Amber Smock, Director of Advocacy, Access Living. Media contact: Bridget Hayman bhayman@accessliving.org or (312) 640-2129 : www.accessliving.org

“I oppose the legalization of assisted suicide because it leads to cases of abuse towards people with disabilities. The safeguards which are available have not been effective. In addition, terminal diagnoses are notoriously unreliable, with no assurance of consistency. It can be, and has been, offered by insurance companies instead of life saving treatment. It heightens the stigma of disabled people being a “burden” on others. It preys on people who are already depressed and may be offered as a solution as opposed to suicide prevention. It increases suicides in general.” Clark A. Craig, Community Organizer, Progress Center for Independent Living. Media contact: Clark Craig ccraig@progresscil.org or (708) 209-1500 : www.progresscil.org

Disability Advocates Oppose City Council’s Proposed Assisted Suicide Resolution

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They say that “all politics are local.” While bills to legalize assisted suicide are a state issue, proponents of these dangerous bills are engaging in local politics as well.

An example is the Evanston City Council in Illinois. This is the home district of the lead sponsor in the state legislature. Last Thursday, the local newspaper announced that a proposed City Council resolution favoring the bill would be heard before the Council’s Human Services Committee on Monday, February 3rd. (h/t to Stephen Mendelsohn of Second Thoughts Connecticut for alerting us.)

The disability advocates at Progress Center for Independent Living, including Evanston resident Larry Biondi, showed up to ensure that the disability opposition to the resolution was clearly heard. News coverage of the Committee meeting included a photo of Biondi making the case that assisted suicide laws are bad public policy:

Man with brown hair and light orange button down shirt sitting in wheelchair, using speech device and head pointer at microphone, with audience members nearby, some in yellow t-shirts.If the legislation were adopted, he said, it would become “the cheapest treatment available in our profit-driven health care system,” and he claimed there would be no real enforcement for the safeguards against abuse contained in the legislation.

Larry Biondi Addresses Evanston Human Services Committee

Unfortunately, the Committee advanced the resolution for consideration by the full City Council, “but three of the four committee members present suggested they might vote against the measure there” according to the news report. The fight will continue.

This is a great example of local disability advocacy against assisted suicide bills. If there’s an assisted suicide bill in your state, please check what your city council is doing. We can’t afford to let proponents slip this under the radar. If you need resource materials, contact Not Dead Yet for handouts, and check out the National Council on Disability report on the dangers posed by these bills.

The Extreme Ableism of Assisted Suicide

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I just came across a brilliant letter that John Kelly sent to the Washington, D.C. Council when they were considering an assisted suicide bill in 2016. I should have posted it here then, but I am doing so now (lightly edited), because it’s one of the best discussions I’ve read of the core problem that assisted suicide advocates have with disability.

Let me just highlight one example from the letter, a Washington Post quote from Dan Diaz, who is still working for Compassion and Choices, traveling around the country doing press conferences and testifying on their behalf in favor of these dangerous bills.

“If I find myself in a situation where I can’t go to the bathroom on my own, where someone has to change my diapers, where I can’t feed myself, where I can’t care for the people around me, where other people have to move me around to keep me from having bedsores, I would then submit, ‘Is that really living?’ ” Diaz said.

Although assisted suicide proponents often accuse opponents of fearing death, the letter below demonstrates how profoundly proponents fear and loath disability. Their ableism is so extreme that they want to carve a vaguely defined segment of old, ill and disabled people out of suicide prevention, enlist our healthcare system in streamlining our path to death, and immunizing everyone involved from any legal consequences, thereby denying us the equal protection of the law.

Second Thoughts Massachusetts Disability Rights Advocates Against Assisted Suicide

November 1, 2016

Chairman Mendelson, Councilmembers:

My name is John Kelly. I am the New England Regional Director for Not Dead Yet, the national disability rights group that has long opposed euthanasia and assisted suicide. I am also the director of Not Dead Yet’s Massachusetts state affiliate, Second Thoughts MA: Disability Rights Advocates against Assisted Suicide.

I refer you to two recent articles in the Washington Post. Read together, they must lead you to vote against assisted suicide bill B21-38. Assisted suicide is hardly about physical pain, despite what proponents have told you. And assisted suicide is promoted by one specific group in the district and country, wealthier white people, while resisted by poorer people and people of color specifically.

The first article came out last Monday, October 24. Titled “‘Death with dignity’ laws and the desire to control how one’s life ends,” this article exposes the main argument for assisted suicide, “that terminally ill patients have the right to die without suffering intractable pain in their final days or weeks,” as a big lie.

Author Liz Szabo reports that assisted suicide proponent group Compassion & Choices “focuses heavily on the need to relieve dying patients of pain.” One ad has the assisted suicide bill giving “a dying person the option to avoid the worst pain and suffering at the end of life.”

Yet the latest research shows that terminally ill patients who seek aid in dying aren’t primarily concerned about pain. Those who have actually used these laws have been far more concerned about controlling the way they exit the world than about controlling pain.

As one California doctor said, “It’s almost never about pain. It’s about dignity and control.”

And that’s what the Oregon and Washington data show. Pain is the least of people’s concerns. Doctors report people requesting the lethal drugs because of psychosocial suffering about becoming disabled through their illness. It’s mental distress about becoming dependent on other people (“losing autonomy” 92%), losing abilities (“less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” 90%), shame and perceived/actual loss of social status (“loss of dignity” 79%), needing help with incontinence (“losing control of bodily functions” 48%), and believing that suicide would leave loved ones better off (“burden on family, friends/caregivers” 41%).

Dr. Ira Byock, a leading palliative care expert, told the Post, “it’s a bait and switch. We’re actually helping people hasten their deaths because of existential suffering. That’s chilling to me.” As Byock said, almost all pain is controllable. Hospice staff are on call 24 hours a day, and caregivers can be trained in administering emergency pain medication until staff arrive.

The real reasons that people want to commit assisted suicide, proponents admit, are about being dependent on other people for personal care. We disability rights activists have been pointing this out all along.

Barbara Coombs Lee, who as an insurance company executive wrote Oregon’s assisted suicide law, brought up the case of the woman who committed assisted suicide because she was incontinent. The woman wrote that “the idea of having somebody take care of me like I am a little 2-month-old baby is just absolutely repulsive. It’s more painful than any of the pain from the cancer.”

Lee described scenarios of disability that she said were “worse than death.” Proponent Dan Diaz emphasized the supposed horrors of disability.

“If I find myself in a situation where I can’t go to the bathroom on my own, where someone has to change my diapers, where I can’t feed myself, where I can’t care for the people around me, where other people have to move me around to keep me from having bedsores, I would then submit, ‘Is that really living?’

This isn’t a public health bill, it’s a death before disability bill.

So this is what some of you are planning to vote for. You are not protecting DC residents from agonizing pain. You are promoting the particular views of one specific group of people, described by Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel as predominantly “white, well-insured, and college-educated.” People who are used to being in control of every aspect of their lives.

So, like so much in the US, assisted suicide is an issue that cuts across class and race. The 2012 election map in Massachusetts shows that wealthier, whiter areas voted heavily for legalization, while working-class whites and people of color voted strongly against. People turning out for Barack Obama and current Sen. Elizabeth Warren defeated the proposal.

The second article, from October 17, by reporter of color Fenit Nirappil, was titled “Right-to-die law faces skepticism in nation’s capital: ‘it’s really aimed at old black people.’” It details the opposition to assisted suicide of Washington’s black majority.

Many in the black community distrust the health-care system and fear that racism in life will translate into discrimination in death, said Patricia King, a Georgetown Law School professor who has written about the racial dynamics of assisted death.

“Historically, African Americans have not had a lot of control over their bodies, and I don’t think offering them assisted suicide is going to make them feel more autonomous,” King said.

District residents told Nirappil of concerns that “low-income black senior citizens may be steered to an early death”, and that in the end, assisted suicide is really all about reducing government healthcare costs.

Derek Humphry, who founded the Hemlock Society (Compassion & Choices’ original name), wrote years ago of the “unspoken argument,” that assisted suicide will gain traction because of “the realities of the increasing cost of health care in an aging society, because in the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice.”

Assisted suicide, like suicide in general, is primarily practiced and promoted by white people. Nirappil reported that national leaders in the assisted suicide movement are all white, and that most of the participants at a recent rally were white. In the 18 year history of the Oregon assisted suicide law, only one black person has used the program. In a state that is now 22% nonwhite, 97% of assisted suicide deaths have been white.

Non-Hispanic whites also commit regular suicide at a rate 2.5 times that of blacks. Rather than importing a predominantly-white practice as a solution for the district, you must say no to this bill and the big lie it hides behind. Assisted suicide is not about protecting suffering people from physical pain, it’s about satisfying the control needs of a group of people, predominantly white, who would rather die than become dependent on another human being.

Please respect your constituents, understand the danger this bill represents, and reject this bill.

Thank you.