For the 5th time in 7 years, disability rights advocates, led by Second Thoughts CT , have thwarted a Connecticut bill – this time it was HB 5898 – to legalize assisted suicide. Not Dead Yet provided testimony and social media support, and New England Regional Director John Kelly joined the radio show “The Full Story”, on March 26, to debate legislative sponsors of assisted suicide bills in Connecticut and New York. (Diane Coleman submitted testimony detailing her own mistaken prognosis, and John Kelly concentrated on how the bill denies people real choice through misdiagnosis, treatment coverage denial, and so on.)
Second Thoughts CT, like its namesake Second Thoughts MA, is a grassroots group focused on opposing efforts to legalize assisted suicide. The group joins conservatives and progressives, disability advocates and professionals, into a potent force that left one prominent proponent “beyond disappointed” in a year passage was expected.
Second Thoughts CT members crashed the proponents’ press conference, securing media coverage as the bill’s opponents. The group held a press conference just prior to the hearing on March 18, and then testified against the bill. A week later, it held a lobby day to reach members of the Public Health Committee.
Disabled cofounders of the group Cathy Ludlum and Stephen Mendelsohn took complementary roles. While Stephen researched, helped organize, and handled social media, Cathy personally moved legislators and media with her powerful, incontestable, testimony from the perspective of a severely disabled woman. She told the health committee that disabled people would be “collateral damage” in any assisted suicide program. (See the NDY blog on Cathy’s testimony.)
Attorney Lisa Blumberg wrote against the bill in CT Mirror , observing, “If the selective writing of lethal prescriptions was a valid medical practice, as proponents assert that is, there would be no reason for laws to immunize medical professionals from suffering any consequences from doing so.” Members Blumberg and Joan Cavanagh lobbied, organized, and submitted testimony.
Long time Not Dead Yetter Elaine Kolb of West Haven, who showed up in one of her Not Dead Yet T-shirts, told committee members, “Keep your poison pills, We’re not dead yet. And don’t make it easier for people to kill themselves.”
Cathy Ludlum said, “It has been a privilege to work with such a great group of people as we fight this bad legislation year in and year out. Thanks to everyone at Second Thoughts CT, our national partners at Not Dead Yet and DREDF, and to the legislators who stood strong.”
[And thanks to John Kelly for this recap of a brilliant effort by all.]