California Assisted Suicide Law Is Denounced By Leading Disability Rights Policy Center

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[Editor’s Note: Apologies for this belated posting of an press release from our friends at DREDF regarding an important new watchdog website launched by our allies at the Patients Rights Action Fund.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 6, 2016
CONTACTS:
Marilyn Golden, Senior Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
(510) 549-9339
mgolden@dredf.org

CALIFORNIA ASSISTED SUICIDE LAW IS DENOUNCED BY LEADING DISABILITY RIGHTS POLICY CENTER

Announces national web resource for reporting abuses and other problems

Berkeley, CA – June 7, 2016 – The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a leading national disability rights law and policy center based in Berkeley, California, denounces the enactment of California’s End of Life Option Act, which goes into effect on June 9.

DREDF is pleased to announce, along with our coalition partners in Californians Against Assisted Suicide, that this week, the national organization Patients Rights Action Fund will launch a new web page where concerned individuals, family members, and friends can bring to light abuses, problems, and complications associated with assisted suicide laws. The new online resource is located at http://patientsrightsaction.org/stories.

California’s assisted suicide law, which is modeled on Oregon’s law, is marked by extraordinarily weak safeguards and oversight, posing great danger to many Californians with disabilities. as well as people with chronic and terminal illnesses, lower-income Californians, and to the general public.

DREDF and all our coalition partners, including the many California disability organizations that opposed this law, remain gravely concerned about it. The End of Life Option Act:

  • creates a deadly mix with our broken, profit-driven healthcare system,
  • is conducive to elder abuse,
  • has very weak safeguards, allowing families to shop for other doctors to provide lethal drugs if the first physician says no, and endangering patients who receive terminal diagnoses that are often mistaken,
  • puts people with depression at risk, and does not require patients requesting lethal drugs to receive a mental
  • health evaluation,
  • provides for no investigation of abuse, and
  • requires no neutral witness to be present when the lethal drugs are taken.

Because the dangers are so significant, many national disability organizations, plus the American Medical Association (AMA), also oppose the legalization of assisted suicide.

DREDF is part of the Californians Against Assisted Suicide coalition, which has worked against assisted suicide laws since 2005. The new California law allowing doctor-prescribed suicide received significant Democrat and Republican opposition in the California Legislature, particularly in the State Assembly. It stalled in the Democrat-controlled Assembly Health Committee because of a significant failure to receive adequate support. The bill was later passed only through the use of an unusual legislative maneuver that placed the bill into a Special Legislative Session on healthcare funding that bypassed many established legislative protections.

Recent attempts to pass similar assisted suicide laws in at least fourteen other states, including Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, and New Hampshire, have failed.

About Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
Founded in 1979, by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) is a national law and policy center, based in Berkeley, CA, dedicated to protecting and advancing the civil rights of people with disabilities.

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Anita Cameron: Blacks and the Anti Assisted Suicide Movement

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[Editor’s Note: Anita Cameron has served on the national NDY Board since late 2013. She is a longtime community organizer with ADAPT and I have had the honor of knowing and working with her since 1987 when I joined ADAPT. She is one of the leaders of Not Dead Yet Colorado. Her article, Blacks and the Anti Assisted Suicide Movement, is very important and I’m grateful for her permission to reprint it below.]

As a disability rights activist, a critical part of disability rights advocacy and activism is, for me, the fight against assisted suicide and euthanasia.

I have been involved in this aspect of the movement for quite some time, upwards of 15 years. I am a member of, and sit on the board of Not Dead Yet, a national, grassroots disability rights organization opposed to the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination.

I’ve always noticed, but it has never really hit me until now, that very few Blacks are a part of the movement.

While we do get support from other Blacks, and there may be a token Black or two at local Not Dead Yet events and protests, as far as I know, I’m the only Black person in the country who is consistently active in this movement. I could be wrong. I hope I am.

Why is this? Why don’t more Black folks get involved with the anti assisted suicide movement?

It is well-known that the face of the anti assisted suicide movement, indeed, the disability rights movement, is White. It is well-known that often, contributions of Blacks to the disability rights movement are erased or unacknowledged. Even if Blacks are seen as leaders, the ones in front of the cameras or receiving the awards and accolades are usually White.

A 2013 Pew study showed that 65% of Black folks are against assisted suicide. Still, there is scant involvement of Black folks in campaigns to stop legislation that would legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia.

I have some ideas why there’s almost no Black participation in this movement.

1. This isn’t a part of our culture.

Frankly, assisted suicide isn’t something that is discussed in the Black community. I’d never heard of it, even though my birth mother lived with chronic illness and lived to see the end results of her condition. Not once did she complain. Not once did she ask to die. None of the folks in my church or community wanted to die because they were sick or disabled. I’m not saying that suicide doesn’t exist in the Black community, but in my experience, it was due to depression related to situational issues, such as the loss of a job, a spouse or loved one or something else entirely. When we get sick or become disabled, we or our families often turn to prayer or the church.

2. Assisted suicide is considered a White thing.

Many Black folks who I talk to about the anti assisted suicide movement say “that’s a White thing, we don’t do that stuff”. They ask me why have I devoted myself to a predominantly White issue.

3. Blacks with disabilities have enough specific issues to work on without working on an almost exclusively White issue that doesn’t affect us.

Some Black activists have told me that I’m wasting time on a movement that has nothing to do with us and that I should be involved in working on issues that directly affect Black folks.

The reasons above are valid but I’ve never let my race be a reason why I don’t do certain forms of activism. I have always been a pioneer, being the first or only Black in my class or my town to do something.

When I first got involved with the social justice and change movement at age 16, I was part of the anti nuclear movement. Yes, I was the only Black person in my group, and that would be true of every group I was a part of until I discovered ADAPT.

I joined the anti assisted suicide and anti euthanasia movement because I felt that it was important to fight against the devaluation of the lives of people with disabilities. Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia of people with disabilities is a deadly form of discrimination resulting from the fact that doctors and others do not see the lives of people with disabilities as valuable. This mirrors society’s beliefs that our lives are not worth living and that it is better to be dead than disabled.

The legalization of assisted suicide sets up a two-tiered system where if a non-disabled person is suicidal, they will receive treatment sometimes against their will, while people with disabilities experiencing the same get assisted suicide as an “option” or “choice”. Society frames the suicide of a non-disabled person as, at worst, a very selfish act or at best, the act of a sick person, while suicide by someone with a disability is considered to be brave and considerate, rather than a tragedy.

Assisted suicide legalization supporters see it as a choice to end their lives when they want to, but there are already options available without legalization.

Sometimes it feels odd as a Black person to be involved with the anti assisted suicide movement. It feels lonely to be the only Black face in my local group. I know that many people feel that I’m only a token.

It has only been very recently that there has been any form of conversation about the involvement of Blacks in the anti assisted suicide/anti euthanasia movement. I can only guess at the reasons for this. There needs to be far more conversations with, and outreach to the black community.

My presence as part of the movement is important and valuable. As we fight potential ballot initiatives in our state that would legalize euthanasia by lethal injection, Blacks will get caught up because due to medical racism, the lives of Blacks are already seen as less worthy than Whites. That’s even more so with Blacks with disabilities. Our families are pressured to withdraw life support for loved ones or we fall under state’s futility laws.

If euthanasia and assisted suicide laws that aren’t restricted to terminally ill folks goes into law here in Colorado, Black folks will surely join the movement as more and more of us are coerced into dying by the medical establishment.

Even if we win the fight in Colorado and defeat those ballot initiatives, groups like Compassion and Choices, formerly, The Hemlock Society, and other groups won’t stop until there is assisted suicide, at the very least, in Colorado.

As more states try to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia, we Blacks, especially those of us with disabilities, will have to stop seeing this as merely a privileged White people’s issue and see that this touches us too. We can’t afford for the only voice in this to be White. We bring a unique and valuable perspective to the movement that cannot be understated.

I call on both the Disability and the Black community around the nation to come together and work on how we amplify Black voices and Black participation in the anti assisted suicide movement. We must be in solidarity with each other. Too many lives are at stake.

 

Center for Disability Rights Creates PSA on Assisted Suicide in Response to Me Before You

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[Editor’s Note: This is a reprint of a Press Release issued by the Center for Disability Rights, NDY’s close partner in Rochester, NY.]

The Center for Disability Rights has created a PSA to address disability and assisted suicide, one of the primary topics highlighted in the new romantic comedy, Me Before You. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Jojo Moyes, who also penned the screenplay. Me Before You tells the story of a cheerful underachiever, Louisa, who is hired as the Personal Care Attendant for a wealthy quadriplegic named Will Traynor. Louisa soon realizes her job is to convince Will to live, as he has an appointment at an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland in six months. Despite the two falling in love Will tells Louisa that love is not enough, and goes through with killing himself because of his disability.

The murder and killing of disabled people in Hollywood films is a common theme. Assisted suicide, in particular, can be seen in a number of films beyond Me Before You including Million Dollar Baby, The Sea Inside, and Whose Life is it Anyway? Assisted suicide is often presented as a logical ending to disabled lives. In these films, disabled people are seen as a burden, and are presented as suffering, so assisted suicide is seen as a reasonable and rational outcome.

In response to the controversy, disabled people around the world have been protesting the movie, both at the London and New York premieres, and during the June 3 opening weekend. As the film heads into its second week in over 2000 theaters across the U.S., activists have continued to try to counter the film through a series of informational events that are being held offline, as well as through social media.

The PSA, which has already garnered over 150,000 views on Facebook, was developed by the Center for Disability Rights with filmmaker Clark Matthews. It features real individuals with disabilities, as they counter the message presented in these harmful films. The PSA highlights that disabled lives are worth living, and that assisted suicide is harmful to the disability community. The idea behind the PSA is to flip the script, and change the story when it comes to disability. Since there are not many films that counter the message that disabled lives are not worth living, the PSA and worldwide protests of the film are attempting to educate the public about the truth about disability. Everyone, whether they have a disability or not, is encouraged to stop accepting such harmful portrayals of disability, by avoiding these movies. Instead, the message is to promote content by disabled creators, and encourage Hollywood to make films that show disabled people living life, something the over 1 billion people with disabilities around the world do, every single day.

Carol Cleigh Sutton: What is the function of movies like Me Before You?

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[Editor’s Note: This is a guest blog by Carol Cleigh Sutton, an original Board member of NDY when we formed in 1996, and a long time disability activist.]

I’ve spent some time thinking about why movies like Me Before You get made. After all, it’s not a bit original. From Whose Life is it, Anyway? (1981) to The Sea Inside and Million$Baby (2004), these plot lines are neither new nor particularly interesting. By eliminating other possibilities, though, I may have found an answer.

First, and most obviously, it is not a vehicle for disabled actors since they never employ disabled actors. In some ways, this is what it must have been like watching Shakespeare in his own time when male actors portrayed women. They expect us to willingly suspend disbelief, but I, for one, never get there. The portrayals are so fake that I, a wheelchair user, simply can’t take them seriously.

Secondly, they’re also not telling anything true or real about the lives of disabled people. Though some of those associated with such movies sometimes claim to have ‘researched’ disability, I find such claims as sadly comic as the non-disabled actors trying to portray us. They don’t want input from such groups as Not Dead Yet, Direct Action Network or ADAPT and get defensive when we provide unsolicited input. Those associated with Me Before You are saying we just don’t understand. Not exactly respectful to our community.

One article in The Guardian claimed that makers of Me Before You had gone to hospitals to research the lives of disabled people (Me Before You director defends film against disability campaigners). Isn’t that a bit like going to a gynecologist to research women’s lives? It might be funny if it weren’t so sad. Um, do I actually have to explain that disabled people *don’t live in hospitals*?

We also, by and large, don’t live in castles, either. The ‘hero’ of this movie has way too much money to be in any way ‘typical’ of disabled people. According to the US Census bureau, people with severe disabilities are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as their non-disabled peers. While there is, of course, vast variation in the economic status of individual disabled people, it seems that movies in this category often represent their protagonist as well off. Why? Could it be that they want us to ignore the other factors in disabled lives that may lead to suicide?

The third possible reason for telling such a story would to make a classic star-crossed lovers story in the tradition of Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet. Oh, but those don’t use disability as reason for the lover’s separation, so obviously even if the author was trying to write a love story in the tradition of the masters, she failed miserably. Since she’s adequately demonstrated a lack of care about real disabled people, and complete lack of knowledge about our lives, this can only indicate a sad use of disability as an unsupported plot device. Hackneyed at best.

The only possible explanation for the function of such movies is to oppose the disability rights movement. This is very like the Backlash described by Susan Faludi regarding the women’s movement.

The function of such movies is to remind us how tragic and terrible life with disability must be against evidence of real disabled people.

In Me Before You, film makers have carefully made sure that the primary, disabled character, Will, has *no* reason to commit suicide other than disability. They’ve made him young, extremely wealthy, good looking, with plenty of family support, in love with the love of his life who also loves him. So, the only possible function of this movie is a *very* direct attack, targeting the disability rights movement and making money off our oppression as a minority group. Yet they seem surprised that we don’t like it.

Wheelchairs seen in public, gasp! Time to put those uppity gimps in their place – again. Time to reinforce the non-disabled horror of disability.

The disability rights movement is wise to how such movies function. Those who make such claptrap can expect vocal opposition, each and every time.

NDY Press Release: Advocates Protest Disability Snuff Film “Me Before You”

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Not Dead Yet, the Resistance

Contacts:
John Kelly 617-536-5140
Diane Coleman 708-420-0539

Advocates Protest Disability Snuff Film “Me Before You”

Disability rights advocates in cities across the United States and around the world are protesting the latest Hollywood movie to end with the assisted suicide or euthanasia of the lead disabled character. Protests have already been held in New York City, Boston and Denver, with more planned throughout opening weekend in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities.

Me Before You is scheduled for general audience release on Friday, June 3rd. Some cities are also providing advance screenings. Members of Not Dead Yet UK protested at the London premier on May 24th, and garnered significant mainstream media coverage (Guardian, Buzzfeed) during the protest and in the days following.

“The last big example of this tired theme was Million Dollar Baby, which came out before the major growth of social media but still resulted in protests covered in the New York Times,” said Stephen Drake, research analyst for Not Dead Yet (USA). “We can’t begin to keep track of the people and cities involved this time.”

Disability rights writers and bloggers have also been blasting the film for its oppressive portrayal of living with significant disabilities like quadriplegia. Examples include articles by disability studies scholar Bill Peace and activist and filmmaker Dominick Evans. Some have been featured in mainstream outlets like Emily Ladau’s article in Salon, Lauren West’s in Huffington Post and Ben Mattlin’s in the Chicago Tribune.

Not Dead Yet’s New England regional director John Kelly has the same level of spinal cord injury as Will Traynor, the lead male character in Me Before You. “Book and screenplay author JoJo Moyes admits she knows nothing about quadriplegics,” said Kelly, “yet her ignorance is allowed to promote the idea that people like me are better off dead. We are not ‘burdens’ whose best option is to commit suicide. No one’s suicide should be treated noble and inspirational. We reject this discrimination. Our suicides should be viewed as tragedies like anyone else’s.”

One of the biggest concerns of the disability community is the message this movie sends to the 12,000 individuals who have new spinal cord injuries each year in the U.S. alone. Kelly Buckland, executive director of the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL), is a spinal cord injured husband and father. “Our society places a high value on physical appearance and ability and at the same time really stigmatizes significant disability,” says Buckland. “We understand what it means to deal with issues like the loss of one’s former dreams as well as the loss of physical abilities. When someone is first hit with this, they may spend time feeling that they’d be better off dead. If assisted suicide had been legal in the past, many of us would not be here today.” NCIL and all major national disability organizations that have taken a position on assisted suicide oppose legalizing it.