The moral cowardice of Compassion & Choices.

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member.

Before getting to the main point of this post, I want to acknowledge the tragic passing of my colleague and friend Stephen Mendelsohn, who died instantly when he was struck by a car on June 1st. In my time with Stephen, I enjoyed hearing about his devout Jewish faith and his references to concepts like “tikkun olam,” or “repairing the world.” In addition to being a kind and honorable person, Stephen was the EPC-USA's primary researcher who kept us apprised of the assisted suicide movement’s activities across the country. The anti assisted suicide and disability rights movements are much poorer without him. I’m sorry, Stephen. May you rest in eternal peace.

Stephen Mendelsohn

One of the things I liked most about interacting with Stephen was that as a fellow autistic person, Stephen had a similarly blunt way of communicating his thoughts. It was a refreshing opportunity for camaraderie. In honor of Stephen, I won’t mince words when I talk about the ableist moral cowardice expressed in “A Patient-Directed Approach: How the U.S. Model of Medical Aid in Dying Balances Compassion with Safeguards” by upper middle class, able-bodied Compassion and Choice’s leaders Kevin Diaz and Bernadette Nunley. In the piece contrasting Canada’s “MAiD” program with their policy goals, they assert:

“This commentary does not dispute nor confirm the facts or interpretations of Canadian law referenced in the article. Instead, it highlights key aspects of the U.S. legal framework, exploring its effectiveness and the principles that distinguish it from the Canadian model. Any comparisons are intended for context and insight, not to assert superiority or to question the legitimacy of the Canadian approach.”

Ie, “Hey, everyone, murdering disabled people is a matter that we should all agree to disagree about!”

I’m sorry, no deal. I’m all for not making prejudiced judgments about, say, people who need to use EBT benefits or who immigrated from a different country, but forcing disabled people of all backgrounds to live in an environment where the government, medical system, media and members of the general populace function as death pushers is not the same thing.

The moral relativity expressed in the aforementioned essay reflects and reinforces the same callousness demonstrated by Canadian Senator Stan Kutcher during Canada’s “Track 2 MAiD” hearings, when he snidely dismissed Canadian disability rights advocates’s attempts to save disabled people’s lives as “moral panic.”

Well, suggesting “MAiD” to someone who has called a suicide hotline, as my friend “Amy” experienced, is a crime against humanity. It’s evil to subject members of a marginalized group to horrible oppression and then take that to the lowest common denominator by offering them to “choice” to be killed.

When I was helping “Amy,” I sent Amy a box of things that had helped me when I was depressed. When I mailed the box, I had the sense that I was sending humanitarian aid to someone being persecuted by a government, because I totally was.

The ethical equivocation in Diaz and Nunley’s paper is nice for them, I’m sure, as they sip cocktails at their organization’s posh lobby events. But, that kind of ethical cowardice is not nice for the disabled community.

The expedient moral relativism expressed by C&C’s leaders about Canada's Track 2 MAiD is an extreme consequence of the world’s pattern of neutrality towards systemic ableism. It’s because of this longstanding apathy towards disability justice that people support incentivizing disabled people to die by suicide in the first place. If a society routinely persecutes and dehumanizes a marginalized group, then it becomes easier for members of that society to tolerate killing members of that group.

Compassion and Choices’ leadership apparently does not comprehend how predatory it is for a person who is functionally an Angel of Death serial killer to look into the eyes of a viciously subjugated person and suggest that they let themselves be killed. And that does not reflect well on the organization’s agenda.