By Lisa Blumberg, JD In 2014, in connection with whether assisted suicide laws would ever be expanded to include people with cognitive decline, Barbara Coombs Lee, then director of Compassion & Choices, said, “It is an issue for another day but is no less compelling.” This was a momentary slip. The political strategy of Compassion […]
A 2007 Not Dead Yet blog described “rush to judgment” cases where people who had sustained a major brain injury were denied life sustaining treatment before appropriate time had passed to determine if they could become conscious. It referred to an article co-authored by Dr. Joel Frader, now a member of the Northwestern Center […]
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 […]
Testimony in Opposition to Delaware House Blll 140 Chair Minor-Brown, Vice Chair Harris, Members of the Committee on Health & Human Development: My name is John B. Kelly. I am the New England Regional Director for Not Dead Yet, the leading national disability rights group opposing assisted suicide, futility judgments, and “better dead than disabled” […]
…but we don’t. In a phone conversation, a friend of a friend invited me to an event in the Spring. I said that it would depend upon a vaccine for Covid-19. Since our mutual friend and I are both high risk, neither will be traveling before then. She then volunteered that she thinks people in […]
I’ve been saying for years that the movement to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia is a loaded gun aimed directly at people with long-term disabilities (https://notdeadyet.org/2014/01/guest-blog-by-w-carol-cleigh-not-paying-attention.html). Though I usually value being proved correct, not so much in this case. But the blatant bigotry I’ve recently seen in that movement surprised even me. I attended a […]
The very heart of the argument for assisted suicide/euthanasia (AS/E) is that an individual may be better off dead than disabled. The fact that this argument can be made in respectable public forums demonstrates just how ableist this society is. How deeply the severely abled fear and loathe those of us who live with disability. […]
Few in the disability community would argue about 2016 being a hard year – assaults on the Americans with Disabilities Act, assaults on our access to education, assaults on safety nets many of us rely on – and of course – assaults on our right to dignified lives in the form of policies and rhetoric […]
As we have been covering since spring, see here, here, click here and here, disability rights advocates around the country, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand held protests against the movie “Me Before You” for its hateful message that some disabled people are better off dead. John shares the same disability as the fictional Will in […]
NDY board member Bill Peace has been writing more on his blog Bad Cripple. Two of his recent posts last 2 touch directly on NDY concerns. In You Can’t do That, he describes the ways in which individuals and society focus hard on what he “can’t” do: The instant negativity attached to disability is raised […]
