Yesterday’s (April 29) edition of the Boston Globe featured a long article about some of the issues and players central to November elections in Massachusetts when voters will decide whether or not to legalize assisted suicide in their state.
The good news is that John Kelly, director of Second Thoughts – people with disabilities opposed to legalization of assisted suicide – is one of the people featured in the article. The bad news is that, in line with the general pro-assisted suicide slant of the article, he’s given little actual space in the article in which to articulate the disability rights community’s opposition to legalization of assisted suicide. Below is a great picture the ran of John, followed by his comments in the article:
Opposition extends well beyond the church pews, though, with some self-described liberals, doctors, and specialists in end-of-life care mobilizing against it. A number of them object on moral grounds, believing suicide is wrong and doctors should never abet it; others fear that the sick will be misdiagnosed and end their lives prematurely. “Assisted suicide sounds good in a world where we have perfect knowledge,” says John Kelly, a longtime disability rights advocate in the state who’s helping organize opposition. “It’s impossible to forecast accurately how long someone has to live.”
The reporter – Scott Helman – didn’t even mention that John is the director of an organization that opposes legalization, which to most readers will translates as meaning John Kelly is only representing himself in this article and in this issue.
Similarly, the longest passages given over to individuals are to proponents of assisted suicides – and perhaps more importantly – their stories. Stories tend to stick with readers longer than policy analysis – on either side of this debate.
Also, and most harmful to disability activists in this political fight, when Helman invokes Kevorkian’s name he omits mentioning that most of Kevorkian’s body count consisted of non-terminally ill women with chronic conditions and disabilities. That piece of information makes the insistence of disability activists that we be part of this debate a lot more comprehensible to the general public.
I’m hoping John can write sometime this week with some reactions and reflections on this experience and how to better fight this uphill battle in the media – the same uphill battle we’ve all been fighting on a national level for over 15 years. –Stephen Drake
To read the whole article, you can access either this link or this one.