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| Meghan Schrader |
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.
In 2023 and 2024 I published blog posts celebrating the anniversaries of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was on July 26th. But I didn’t write a blog post last year; I wasn’t sure what to say.
Since 2025, there has been a year of disability access erosion. The government has strong-armed restructuring the Special Education system and attempted to eliminate bellwether disability programs and guidelines that have existed for decades. The government has reduced access to home and community care that helps prevent institutionalization. The government has attempted to reduce benefits for disabled veterans, discontinued sign language interpreters at White House press briefings, paused new regulations improving air travel for wheelchair users and much more.
One of the most radical changes to America’s disability access infrastructure is the Department of Justice’s approach to a 1999 SCOTUS precedent called Olmstead LC. Olmstead generally requires states to provide community supports to disabled people who would be unnecessarily institutionalized without them. Ie, SCOTUS held that there may be some people who do need institutionalization, like if they are homicidal, have no ability to care for themselves whatsoever or prefer to live in an institution. But within reason, states can't put disabled people in institutions because states prefer that to community support. This determination created Olmstead’s “community integration mandate.”
For 27 years, Olmstead has been interpreted to mean that states have to create as many community services as possible. Legal loopholes and structural barriers to community services continue to cause unnecessary institutionalization, but Olmstead helps many disabled people who can live safely in their communities avoid arbitrary confinement.
Recently the Department of Justice released a slip opinion saying that states don't have to follow that precedent anymore; if they want to consolidate their disability services in institutions, and thus coerce disabled people who could live safely in their communities into institutions, that's fine. The Olmstead precedent still stands, but the DOJ will not enforce it.
At the same time, the government has proposed eliminating categorical grants for the Agency For Community Living, dismantling the ACL and spreading its functions across different agencies, even though the ACL has been shown to play a crucial role in helping disabled people live in their communities. The President’s 2026 budget proposed eliminating the federal Long Term Care Ombudsman Program that helps monitor abuse in institutions, and HHS rescinded guidance requiring that nursing homes hire enough staff to prevent life-threatening neglect. These policies make it more likely that disabled people will be institutionalized and will increase the misery of those experiences.
Coercive institutionalization has a significant impact on euthanasia prevention efforts. Bear in mind that one of the ways hospital staff have tried to bully disabled Canadian Roger Foley into assisted suicide is to withhold medical equipment and procedures needed to meet his basic needs. Disabled Canadian Normand Meunier died by assisted suicide because a hospital didn’t keep an accessible mattress on hand which resulted in him developing a festering bedsore. Although our assisted suicide laws are not as expansive as Canada’s, many disabled people who would become terminal without the correct support are also at risk of being unnecessarily institutionalized. Coercing such persons into institutions makes it more likely that they will choose assisted suicide.
I think all readers can understand that people need the solace and support of their communities, and to feel that they belong there. Forcing people who do not need to be institutionalized into institutions is like an unjust prison sentence. Such situations cause despair and hopelessness, furthering the culture of death that euthanasia opponents are trying to fight.
I invite readers to consider late disability studies scholar and assisted suicide opponent Paul Longmore’s concept of “social death.” In Longmore’s memoir “Why I Burned My Book And Other Essays On Disability,” Longmore criticizes assisted suicide advocates for ignoring ableism.
Longmore asserts:
“One wades through reams of this suicide rights advocacy without finding any real acknowledgment of the intense social stigma and discrimination that segregate people with disabilities…deny them opportunities for education, employment, marriage, and family, rob them of social dignity and self-esteem, and inflict on many of them what can only be called "social death." One searches in vain for even a passing reference to the civil-rights movement of disabled Americans that has been battling this discrimination for generations. One finds no mention and, one concludes, no knowledge of the independent-living movement of people with major physical disabilities. Apparently, none of this has attracted the attention or interest of suicide rights activists.”Collectively, the aforementioned policy changes and proposals inflict the “social death” that Longmore talked about. Weakening the requirement that states provide support in the most integrated setting possible will rob unjustly institutionalized persons of hope. That’s the impact of weakening disability access laws in general: robbing disabled people of hope for a happy, dignified life.
So, euthanasia opponents, embrace your full potential as human dignity advocates: honor euthanasia prevention and the 36th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act by supporting policies that help disabled people thrive.
Author Note 1: I did an interview with moral theologian Charlie Camosy about how coerced institutionalization and assisted suicide are connected to one another. It can be read here.
Author Note 2: For a detailed list of the extensive disability policy changes that have been implemented or attempted in the past year, see this link.
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