National Sanctity of Human Life Day—on January 22—celebrates the value of every human life from the pre-born to the grave. We are familiar with threats to the unborn, but what about the seniors and people with disabilities at risk of dying from physician assisted suicide?
“Death with dignity,” as physician assisted suicide is euphemistically called, is legal in Washington, D.C. and eight states—California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—by statute and in Montana by a court ruling. And the momentum is building. Indiana, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia all have bills pending in 2021.
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The coalition of groups opposing physician assisted suicide span the political spectrum from right to left: pro-life groups, faith-based organizations, national disability groups, and medical organizations. I’m represented in multiple places on this spectrum, and support the reasons disability groups and leaders give for opposing laws designed to cut our lives short.
1. It’s a financial not a medical decision
“The legalization of assisted suicide is a deadly mix with our broken, profit-driven health care system, where financial pressures already play far too great a role. Direct coercion is not even necessary. If insurers deny, or even merely delay, approval of expensive, life-giving treatments, patients will, in effect, be steered toward assisted suicide, if it is legal.”
Marilyn Golden, Senior Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund
2. Abuse of elders and people with disabilities is a growing, but often undetected problem, making coercion virtually impossible to identify or prevent.
3. Doctors are fallible and wrongly predict how long a terminal patient might live. This causes people to give up on treatment and accept a premature death.
4. People who ask to die could be treated for depression or given better palliative care instead of lethal drugs.
5. Some see physician assisted suicide as a duty and the only way to stop being a burden to loved ones.
6. Intractable pain is often used as the main reason for physician assisted suicide laws. Yet, Oregon death doctors haven’t reported pain as being in their patient’s top five list.
7. For anyone dying in discomfort, palliative sedation is legal in all 50 states.
8. The requirement that physician assisted suicide be limited to people who are terminal and give voluntary consent is not enforced or investigated.
9. Disability advocates have long known that ‘quality of life’ is code for ‘Better Dead Than Disabled.’ Thankfully, on March 28, 2020, the federal Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights, warned that policies that deny treatment based on quality of life judgments are discriminatory and unlawful.
10. Seniors and people with disabilities don’t need to die to have dignity. We reject society’s view that people who deal with incontinence and other losses in bodily function lack dignity.
I can attest that disability is not a fate worse than death. What do you think?
In preparing this post, I acknowledge the resources provided by the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund at https://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted%20suicide/ and Not Dead Yet at https://notdeadyet.org/disability-rights-toolkit-for-advocacy-against-legalization-of-assisted-suicide.
For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog and find several retail links to my book, “Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith.”
6 replies on ““Death with Dignity” Laws Deadly to Disabled”
Heavy topic. I didn’t realize how widely euthanasia has been legalized. Thanks for addressing the topic.
It’s important for us to shine the light on the darkness that is spreading across the country.
Wonderful blog! Thank you for speaking and witnessing to the truth of the value of human life!
It is our Christian duty to speak up and stand against unjust laws and behaviors.
Thank you Angela, for your web page, for your work, for your heart, for your service to God and his children.
Thanks for the encouragement Tony; the timing was perfect.