U.K.: Brignell Column on Disability and Assisted Suicide Misses Several Points

Last week, New Statesman, a U.K. based magazine covering current affairs, published an essay by disability columnist Victoria Brignell. Unfortunately, “Assisted Death,” indicates she shares a lot of confusion with the very public she’s trying to educate about disability rights and “assisted death:”

In recent years the media spotlight has fallen on a number of disabled individuals who have expressed a wish for an assisted death – people like Diane Pretty, Debbie Purdy and Craig Ewart (whose death provoked controversy when it was shown on national television). What the Daniel James differs is that he was not terminally ill. He was only 23 and if he had not killed himself, he might have lived a normal lifespan.

Daniel chose to take that deadly concoction of chemicals not because he wanted to avoid a long, painful and distressing death but because he simply didn’t want to carry on living.

It’s vital, when discussing assisted death, that we distinguish between those disabled people who are terminally ill and those whose disability is not life-threatening. The ethics involved are very different.

Brignell seems to think there’s a clear bright line here that should be obvious to everyone and that no on is trying to erase, if it actually exists. Perhaps it would be clearer to her if she had the benefit of our experience with Jack Kevorkian in the U.S. Several studies have documented that only a minority of the people who died at his hands were terminally ill. In spite of that documentation, there is a new wave of surprise on the parts of the public and the press when the information surfaces in the news again. In fact, most of Kevorkian’s body count consisted of people with chronic conditions and disabilities – and the nonterminal “clients” were more likely to be women. The muted – to put it kindly – tone of public outrage in reaction to the facilitation of Daniel James’s suicide by his own parents means that there is no real cause for optimism for more accurate and thoughtful analyses across the pond.

As we’ve pointed out before, the worldwide euthanasia movement doesn’t have an interest in limiting “eligibility” for euthanasia or assisted suicide to people who are “terminally ill,” but typically introduce legislation as a “door-opening” strategy. In fact, here in the U.S. the latest move – in New Hampshire – is an attempt to redefine “terminal condition” to encompass any “incurable” condition that will result in “premature death.”

According to the Foundation for Spinal Cord Injury Prevention, Care & Cure, having any degree of tetraplegia does, in fact, reduce one’s life-expectancy (see chart below):

Brignell’s biggest failure in analysis occurs here, IMO:

An able-bodied person can take their own life without anyone else’s assistance but it is almost physically impossible for someone who is completely paralysed to die by suicide. If a tetraplegic person wants to end their life and society denies that person an assisted death then society is forcing that disabled person to go on living against their will.

This seems to undermine a disabled person’s independence – their right to make choices for themselves. So according to this argument, the professionals who helped Daniel to die were correct in supporting his right to self-determination. As Daniel James’s mother wrote so movingly: “Our son could not have been more loved… This was his right as a human being. Nobody but nobody should judge him or anyone else.”

These two paragraphs buy into some of the biggest lies/myths perpetrated by the euthanasia movement and others who argue for a “right” for assistance in suicides for people with disabilities.

The claim that “it is almost physically impossible for someone who is completely paralysed to die by suicide” is false. Several disability activists with quadriplegia have told me they can come up with a long list of ways they can commit suicide without assistance – and have shared some of them.

I won’t share them here. This isn’t a “how to do it” site.

What supporters of the so-called “right” of Daniel James and others with physical disabilities are calling for is access to a specific means to commit suicide. In fact, the controlled substances used by Dignitas or used in other instances of euthanasia or assisted suicide aren’t available to the general public – except through a licensed medical professional.

So this isn’t about the right to commit suicide, but commit it in a certain way – a way that is unavailable to the vast majority of nondisabled people.

I’ll digress for a moment to talk about the choices of two people who committed suicide by different means. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson took his own life using a gun in 2005. Thompson was well-known for his ability to obtain drugs – without a doctor – that are generally unavailable to more law-abiding citizens. A gun, though, was what he chose as a means of suicide. Daniel F. Gunther, one of the “Ashley X” physicians, committed suicide by asphyxiation in his garage. As a physician, he could presumably have used controlled substances to end his life.

This points up the largely ignored importance of talking about what the debate about “assisted suicide” is really about. Is it about access to suicide or access to a certain means to that end? (no pun intended)

Suppose, for example, that a person with quadriplegia wanted to end her life by hanging. Does that mean she is entitled to have someone set up the rope and noose, put it around her neck, and then strangle her with it?

Suppose someone with tetraplegia wants to use a gun. Is he entitled to have a chosen “friend” hold a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Sound absurd? Not if the assisted suicide debate is really about suicide itself.

But it’s not about suicide, is it? It’s not about autonomy, either. If it was about autonomy, it assistance would be offered to anyone who wanted to commit suicide by whatever means he or she chose.

Maybe we should all try to figure out exactly what this debate is about. It sure doesn’t look like autonomy from where I sit.

But the first step to figuring out the debate is to reject some of the absurd slogans, mantras, myths and outright lies coming out of the euthanasia proponents – and reframe these issues in our own way and on our own terms. –Stephen Drake