Disability Rights Leadership Institute on Bioethics: Assisted Suicide Laws

1. Disability Rights Leadership Institute on Bioethics: Assisted Suicide Laws

2. Disability Rights Leadership Institute on Bioethics: Assisted Suicide Laws Marilyn Golden Senior Policy Analyst Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF)

3. Assisted Suicide Laws Assisted suicide proposals & laws • Threat of major public policy changes, regularly & often • Far more often fail than pass – if we stop them • What does “assisted suicide” mean?

4. Assisted Suicide Laws Assisted suicide proposals & laws (cont’d.) • Fought by coalitions spanning political spectrum • Actually decrease choice and self-determination • Think outside the medical model • Terminology

5. Assisted Suicide Laws Legal Alternatives Available Today Which include: • Palliative care • Palliative sedation

6. Assisted Suicide Laws Some of our objections relate specifically to the disability community

7. Assisted Suicide Laws Disability-related objections • Suicide prevention vs. suicide assistance

8. Assisted Suicide Laws The “public image of severe disability as a fate worse than death … become[s] grounds for carving out a deadly exception to longstanding laws and public policies about suicide intervention services … Legalizing assisted suicide means that some people who say they want to die will receive suicide intervention, while others will receive suicide assistance. The difference between these two groups of people will be their health or disability status, leading to a two-tiered system that results in death to the socially devalued group.” – Diane Coleman, President, Not Dead Yet –

9. Assisted Suicide Laws Description of following cartoon: This cartoon shows a wheelchair user in front of a Suicide Prevention Program with many steps up to the door. But around the corner, there’s a wheelchair ramp leading to another door labeled “Assisted Suicide.”

10. Assisted Suicide Laws

11. Assisted Suicide Laws Disability-related objections 2. Consider the Netherlands

12. Assisted Suicide Laws “The Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and from voluntary euthanasia to nonvoluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally to deny more active medical [assistance to die], i.e. euthanasia, to those who could not effect their own deaths. (Quote continues >)

13. Assisted Suicide Laws “Nor could they deny assisted suicide or euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination. Involuntary euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for patients not [intellectually] competent to choose for themselves.” – Dr. Herbert Hendin, Congressional testimony –

14. Assisted Suicide Laws Disability-related objections 3. Terminal Illness Prognosis – A Fundamental Loophole

15. Assisted Suicide Laws Disability-related objections 4. Danger to people with depression andpsychiatric disabilities

16. Assisted Suicide Laws The Myth of Free Choice and Self-Determination

17. Assisted Suicide Laws A Deadly Mix: \\\\ The deadly combination of assisted suicide and our broken, profit-driven US health care system

18. Assisted Suicide Laws \\\\ Description of following cartoon:To show we’re not the only ones this notion has occurred to, here’s a cartoon we found with a health care executive at a desk, commenting to a colleague, “We’re able to hold down healthcare costs through assisted suicide.”

19. Assisted Suicide Laws

20. Assisted Suicide Laws Other Failures of “Safeguards” in the Oregon law

21. Assisted Suicide Laws Other Failures of “Safeguards” in the Oregon law: Doctor shopping

22. Assisted Suicide Laws Percentage of Reported Oregon Deaths Through C&C Assistance (examples of particular years) •  Through 2002: “About 75%” • In 2003: 79% • In 2008: 88% (These are typical, not outliers…)

23. Assisted Suicide Laws Other Failures of “Safeguards”in the Oregon law: Good faith standard

24. The safeguards do work for someone: The doctors! • Doctors are not held liable if they act in “good faith,” an impossible standard to disprove. • The “good faith” standard makes all of the other “safeguards”unenforceable. • For all other procedures, doctors are liable if they are negligent.

25. Assisted Suicide Laws Oregon: Minimal Data & Fatally Flawed Oversight •  Reporting requirements lack teeth • Non-compliance is not monitored • Important questions go unasked • No investigation of abuse • No autopsies • Underlying data is destroyed annually

26. Assisted Suicide Laws The Political Landscape also includes: Organizations such as Final Exit Network

27. Assisted Suicide Laws The Political Landscape also includes: The ACLU

28. Assisted Suicide Laws The Political Landscape also includes: Us! In multi-constituency coalitions