Testimony of Ian McIntosh
Director of Disability Outreach
Patients Rights Action Fund
Joint Committee on Public Health
H.2246 / S.1331
An Act Relative to end-of-life options
October 20, 2023
My name is Ian McIntosh, I’m a Canadian émigré with disabilities and I’m the Director of Disability Outreach for the Patients Rights Action Fund.
In conversation available on YouTube, proponent Thaddeus Pope conceded to Massachusetts disability rights champion John Kelly, that assisted suicide is all about people with disabilities.
In the disability community we know that out of state proponents initial campaigned promises always result in a bait and switch where safeguards turn into barriers, as a matter of protocol.
Last November, the executive director of Massachusetts Death with Dignity, told a Massachusetts newspaper, “Once you get something passed, you can always work on amendments later…”
It’s the same model Canada has recklessly betrayed its citizens with, where expansion now includes death as a cure for poverty. And it’s the Canadian model that former Compassion and Choices executive Barbara Coombs Lee applauded.
To the claim from the Massachusetts ACLU that 30 years of data present no issues: Every national disability rights organization (including the National Council on Disability) with a position on assisted suicide oppose it with a clear understanding that legalizing assisted suicide doesn’t convey new rights to the individual but rather it removes liability from the assisting medical professional.
And speaking of the intent to betray assured safeguards, inevitable expansion despite promises otherwise, in January, we welcomed The Alzheimer’s Association – who terminated its brief two month “educational” relationship with Compassion and Choices citing, “Their values are inconsistent with those of the Association…”, and: “…Research supports a palliative care approach as the highest quality of end-of-life care for individuals with advanced dementia.”
And just over a month ago, two central policy objections from the federal government in defense of actual disability civil rights, were announced in conjunction with, the 50th anniversary of the Rehabilitation Act, that validates long standing opposition to legalizing assisted suicide.
First, HHS Office for Civil Rights released a proposed rulemaking on disability nondiscrimination specific to health care. Then, the National Institutes of Health through the director of National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities in late September designated people with disabilities as a “health disparity population.”
In explaining the designation decision, NIH wrote, “[D]iscrimination, inequality and exclusionary structural practices, programs and policies inhibit access to timely and comprehensive health care, which further results in poorer health outcomes. ”
Spelling out its reasons for its proposed rule, HHS OCR states, “People with disabilities are often excluded from health programs and activities and denied an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from quality health care. That discrimination contributes to significant health disparities and poorer health outcomes than persons with disabilities would experience absent the discrimination.”
Mindful of Pope’s concession, it’s another way of saying, that the very policy premise that allows for legalized assisted suicide is that there is such a thing as a rational suicide, but only if you have disability.
I ask you to oppose this insidious public policy and walk with us past the bottom line of a profit driven healthcare system and into the common good as full citizens.