I hope to get a transcript and/or link to video up later, but it turns out that Baroness Campbell of Surbiton delivered a speech during debate of the Falconer bill that caught everyone’s attention – and may have significantly affected the outcome of the vote.
Om July 7th, the Daily Mail ran an article about Campbell and her statement to the House of Lords:
Speaking from a wheelchair and needing help from a colleague to sip water, Baroness Campbell condemned the amendment for ‘turning the traffic light from red to green on state-sanctioned assisted dying – albeit in another country’.
She said she had been told by doctors that her life was at an end – and said she could imagine that others would come under similar pressure from relatives.
‘I tick every box of Lord Falconer’s criteria to die. I could go tomorrow and, believe me, I would have no trouble in persuading two doctors. Three years ago two doctors persuaded me it was time for me to go on my way.’
She added: ‘It takes extraordinary will to rise above these views, especially when such views are held by loved ones.’
Baroness Campbell, who needs a ventilator to breathe at night, added: ‘Legalising premature death is a treatment option to plant the seeds of doubt about one’s right to demand help to live with dignity and undermines the state’s responsibility to ensure all citizens can live with dignity.
‘If this amendment were to succeed I believe it will place a new and invidious pressure on disabled and terminally ill people to think they are closer to the end of their lives. Some will consider death is preferable to fighting for the support to live with dignity. It would be the cheapest, quickest, simplest option.’
That wasn’t all there was to the story, either. On July 11th, The Telegraph ran another story on Campbell, with even more detail:
Baroness Campbell considers herself very, very lucky. Her husband was able to tell the medical staff what his wife could not: that she already spent every night on a ventilator. And yes, she did want to be resuscitated. Her condition may be degenerative. But she was a fighter, and she wanted to live. To the hospital’s shame, he was forced to show doctors photographs of Lady Campbell receiving an honorary doctorate in law from Bristol university to ”prove” the quality of her life.
”What frightens me about that night is that I knew these doctors were doing what they thought was best,” she says. ”Doing what they thought I would have wanted. But if Roger hadn’t been there, there would have been no one to tell them my wishes.
”What was even worse was the isolation I would have felt if I had been alone. Part of me began to think: ‘would I have want to live on a ventilator? When you are in that situation it could be very easy to be persuaded that maybe you wouldn’t. I knew they weren’t right but I remember thinking: ‘how much say have I got in this? If Roger wasn’t here, would I have been allowed to die because the doctors believed it was kinder to end my life?”
Campbell’s story is disturbing and stops short of where real horror lies.
What if Campbell had been a lower-middle class pensioner with no higher educational degree or notoriety of any sort?
Let’s push it farther than that:
What is happening right now to disabled people with little education or income – and with no one to convince doctors that their lives are worth living?
Readers of this blog might note similarities between Campbell’s story and the one posted last month about Terrie Lincoln and her family’s fight to make sure she survived a spinal cord injury.
The recent vote in the UK, along with the attention given to Campbell’s story in the press, indicates stories like those of Baroness Campbell and Terrie Lincoln are powerful advocacy tools. I strongly suspect that these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. We need more of these stories – and people willing to tell them. The trick is finding people who actually survived these kinds of situations. –Stephen Drake
You really hit the nail on the head. The concern for people with a disability are not those with a family or the ability to assert their rights. It is all those who have no voice, education, or ability to demonstrate their life is worth living. Thus it is not only disabled people at risk but all those whose life is perceived to lack value. What about elderly people who have outlived their loved ones? What about a high level quadriplegic who will likely need a ventilator? What about a person with a brain injury whose organs could be harvested? This sort of list is very long and the decision making strategy has less to do with medicine than cultural perceptions about the value of life.
Viva Jane Campbell! I look forward to transcript.
Article implies education is a kind of “armor” to get taken seriously, and have a right to live. Not so.
Although it does realize there’s a money factor – or the perception that we, severely disabled are “too expensive”….
Thank God for the efforts of Campbell and others with social position and first-hand experience. Now, let’s hear the voices of the homeless and institutionalized as well, and surely those living in the middle somewhere shall join them. Our voices and prayers matter.
Yes, I believe that these stories are the most effective means of helping the average citizen to see the harm of assisted suicide. While many of us recognize that some people have lost the will to live and do not want to commit suicide “alone”, our sympathy must be channeled in means other than fulfilling their requests. To do so violates a life ethic principle that helps protect all of us, but especially the sick and disabled, from withdrawl and/or denial of health care when we are at are most vulnerable.
I am trying to fight this battle on behalf of my mother. She has late-stage Parkinson’s, a grapefruit-size, infected bedsore left to fester without aggressive treatment for 4 months by her nursing home – and multiple legal documents attesting to her wish to live and receive all treatments necessary to prolong life. She’s a fighter who has always believed in life and living at all costs for as long as one can hang on. Now a court-appointed guardian (they overruled her wish to designate me) Glenda DeLisle of Innovative Services in Appleton Wisconsin and staff doctors want to offer “comfort care only” and withhold the aggressive care necessary to keep her alive. She’s on Medicaid only, requires tube feeding and hydration due to swallowing difficulties, but she still enjoys the taste of soda, communicates by gesture, expression and occasionally a full sentence and is alert and aware of everything going on. Again as so many others have stated, it’s partially about cost – Mom is indigent, as am I – and partially because her wish to continue living and fighting is pushed aside by those who substitute their own judgment regarding her quality of life for her own. Damn them, my Mom will die in days and I can’t help her.
To Betty’s Daughter,
You are doing the best you can. Your mom knows. Sending empathy.
You have been doing a great fight.