Testimony of Amy E. Hasbrouck
Director, Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet
Joint Committee on Public Health
H.2246 / S.1331
An Act Relative to end-of-life options
October 20, 2023
Hello, and thank you for the chance to address the committee in opposition to the End of Life Options Act. I am coming to you from Québec, Canada, as the director of Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet, a non-religious, progressive organization by and for disabled people that gives voice to the disability rights-based opposition to assisted suicide, euthanasia, and other life-ending practices. I’m also speaking to you as a Massachusetts voter, who has worked to advance the rights of disabled people for more than 40 years. I am testifying today to help Massachusetts avoid the mistakes that Canada has made in adopting medical assistance in dying, or MAiD.
Since June of 2016, more than 50,000 Canadians have been euthanized. Every one of those people – whether or not their natural death was “reasonably foreseeable,” or they were at the “end of life,” – had a physical, mental or sensory limitation which, in combination with discrimination and barriers in the environment, caused one or more disabilities, regardless of whether they self-defined as disabled. That is my first message, that the end-of-life options bill will have a disproportionate and deleterious impact on disabled citizens of the Commonwealth.
My second message is that the End-of-Life Options Act will actually limit the choices available to people at the end of life. Before Canada’s MAiD law was implemented, people with terminal illness were guided toward options for palliative care, despite an insufficiency of such services. Now, MAiD is seen as the go-to solution for non-terminal people with disabilities as well as mental suffering, and palliative care professionals are leaving the field because guarantees of conscience rights for clinicians who do not want to participate in euthanasia have been eliminated. The government of Canada has done everything possible to make access to assisted death broader, easier and faster, by expanding eligibility to people with mental illness, and removing the reflection period and final consent requirements for people whose deaths are considered “reasonably foreseeable.” In addition, half of the 74 people in TVNDY’s database of cases where euthanasia was suggested or provided despite the person’s questionable eligibility were at risk of institutionalization for lack of self-directed personal assistance services. Under assisted dying laws, there can be no free choice to die while old, ill and disabled people don’t have a free choice in where and how we live.
Rather than ensuring that every person who expresses a desire to die receives suicide prevention services and the supports they need to live well, disabled people who are suicidal will get help to die under the proposed bills. This constitutes illegal discrimination.
Please recommend against this legislation. Thank you.
https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4746
Ian McIntosh & Matt Vallière – 1:19:49
Megan Schraeder – 2:14:05
Anita Cameron – 2:48:21
Amy Hasbrouck – 3:05:09
Diane Coleman – 3:18:50
Jules Good – 3:23:35
Susie Mosher – 3:28:16