By Lisa Blumberg In a widespread disaster grievously impacting people in general, people who happen to have disabilities tend to be invisible. This may partly stem from the “better dead than disabled” ethos. If a disability is considered to irretrievably diminish the quality and value of your life, why be concerned about other problems could […]
Trisomy 18 is a genetic condition that usually results in physical health problems and cognitive limitations. Life expectancy is currently shorter than typical but people can live into their 20’s and 30’s and one American with trisomy 18, Megan Hayes, celebrated her fortieth birthday with fanfare. Unfortunately, it seems that this information has been slow […]
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 […]
By Lisa Blumberg, JD In late 2023, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities for research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This means that NIMHD now recognizes that people with disabilities as a group experience significant disparities in their rates of […]
In the article “Rational Suicide in Later Life: A Systematic Review of the Literature” in the National Library of Medicine, the authors reviewed 23 studies on “rational suicide” with the stated aim of better understanding the concept of rational suicide in older adults. The piece defines rational suicide as “a sane, well-thought-out and fairly stable […]
By Lisa Blumberg Currently the several states that have legalized assisted suicide adhere to the Oregon model, the two most significant aspects of which are that assisted suicide is restricted to those presumed to have less than six months to live and the lethal drugs, once obtained, must be self-administered. Opponents of assisted suicide see […]
Today’s Newsweek features a terrific opinion piece by disability advocate and attorney Lisa Blumberg! Here’s a photo, excerpt and link to the whole article: Assisted Suicide Laws Violate the Americans with Disabilities Act This summer, disability rights advocates sued California over its so-called End of Life Options Act. Under this 2016 law, assisted suicide is […]
Canada has the broadest euthanasia law in the world. Both people who are ill and people who have disabilities deemed to cause them to suffer may request that a doctor or nurse practitioner provide them with a drug induced death. (1) Alan Nichols, a 61-year-old man with a history of depression was euthanized, over the […]
For years, advance medical directives, popularly known as living wills, have been promoted as giving people control over what happens to them at “end of life”, i.e., when they are in dire medical straits. (1) It is hard to disagree with the concept. Certainly, people have the right to refuse treatment they don’t find helpful […]
We just learned that Lisa Blumberg’s excellent op-ed about the dangers of California’s assisted suicide expansion bill was published in Inside Sources on September 13. Four months earlier, Marilyn Golden’s op-ed in Capitol Weekly was also published. DREDF as well as Disability Rights California and others worked to oppose SB 380’s reductions in the minimal […]
