Lying About Disabled People’s Welfare Is Wrong

By Meghan Schrader
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

Meghan Schrader

I’ve talked several times on this blog about the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, because it threatens new protections against euthanasia and infanticide. It also contains critical new protections to help disabled people stay in their communities rather than institutions, as well as improvements to internet access, support for disabled parents, etc. These protections directly impact disabled people’s quality of life, declines in which contribute to euthanasia, suicide and/or medical neglect.

The Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit takes the position that implementing the new community integration clarifications is “burdensome” to states. It asks the government to strike these regulations from the final rule and let disabled people shoulder the burden of being coerced into institutions for state convenience.

Alas, the Department of Justice, along with five other states, has joined a proposed resolution to the lawsuit in which the United States District Court Northern District of Texas would rule that the government must drop the community integration protections from the 2024 Final Rule. 

But I think that many EPC blog readers may not be aware of this.

To address this issue I have to mention the debate about whether the law should define gender dysphoria as a disability, but I’m also putting that issue aside for now, not because it isn’t something important that impacts vulnerable people, but to help EPC blog readers understand what the lawsuit actually says.

The original version of the lawsuit was partially precipitated by a section of the Final Rule that defined gender dysphoria as a disability and the lawsuit mentioned that, along with asking the government to vitiate all of the new protections in the Final Rule and Section 504 itself. Yet regardless of what one believes about whether Section 504 ought to define gender dysphoria as a disability, the President’s EO on gender identity issues specifically says that gender dysphoria is not a disability. That means that that provision of the Final Rule will not be enforced.

So, several states dropped out of the lawsuit and the lawsuit was amended to contest the rest of the Final Rule, especially its community integration mandate.

Since January of 2026, the lawsuit has not mentioned gender dysphoria at all; the text of the lawsuit makes this clear. Yet when agreeing to drop out of the amended lawsuit in May, Indiana’s attorney general wrote this on his Facebook page:

“With the Trump Administration’s swift action to reverse Biden’s unlawful expansion of Section 504, we have voluntarily dismissed our claims in a multi state lawsuit. Section 504 was never meant to advance a radical and woke agenda. It exists to protect Americans with real physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities-not include gender dysphoria at the expense of those that need support.”

This statement is not accurate. The version of the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit that Indiana dropped out of in May 2026 says nothing about gender dysphoria.

Surely Indiana’s AG was aware of that, since it’s his responsibility to be apprised of the content of his own lawsuit.

Unfortunately, that statement seems like an attempt to hide the lawsuit’s contents from people in his political orbit who may agree that Section 504 shouldn’t define gender dysphoria as a disability, but might not be cool with coercing nonviolent disabled people into institutions.

Indiana’s AG is not the only government official erroneously claiming that the lawsuit was restricted to gender dysphoria; I’ve seen other AGs do it as well.

But aside from impacting disabled people who identify as all different genders and hold different beliefs about gender dysphoria-related policies, the lawsuit no longer has anything to do with gender dysphoria. 

It has to do with arbitrarily coercing disabled Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds into institutions so that state officials can direct their energy and money to things other than community support. That’s it.

Lying is wrong, and lying about coercing disabled people into institutions for state convenience violates society’s moral obligations to persons with disabilities. 

Raised, Recontextualized, Retired, Then Reissued: The AAS’s “MAiD” Statement

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

This blog post responds to the fact that the American Association of Suicidology’s 2017 statement saying that Oregon Model “MAiD” is not “suicide,” previously “retired” by the AAS Executive Committee in 2023, was reissued verbatim this year.

I may write follow-up blog posts about this development, but I will stick with this one for now.

Clearly the AAS is comprised of brilliant scholars who have done great good for suicide prevention. Yet AAS’s vacillation can be understood to suggest that the statement is not indisputably based entirely on whatever scientific method the AAS considers most useful for studying suicide, but is at least partly influenced by the individual perspectives and ideologies of which scholars are in charge of the AAS at a given time. Suicidologists in charge of the AAS in 2017 thought it would be good to create the statement, the suicidologists in charge of the 2023 AAS Executive Committee thought it would be good to retire it, and enough current AAS suicidologists thought it would be good to reissue it.

However, the AAS’ statement does not establish unanimity among suicide prevention experts. In 2025 the New Hampshire Coalition For Suicide Prevention opposed the New Hampshire End of Life Freedom Act, because “This bill will send the message that it is OK to take your own life “in certain circumstances,” and “While framed as a compassionate option, physician-assisted suicide often exacerbates existing inequities in healthcare systems.”

Moreover, the International Association For Suicide Prevention released a 2025 “IASP Position Statement on Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia” warning about an overlap between “MAiD” and “suicide.” While not as unequivocal as euthanasia opponents would like (despite recommending a ban on psychiatric euthanasia and expressing deep concerns about the systemic pressures that might coerce disabled people who aren’t dying to end their lives, the statement doesn’t say, “all ‘MAiD’ is suicide, don’t legalize it for anyone”), it also does not say that any particular form of “MAiD” is not suicide.

Despite the harms that the Oregon Model poses to marginalized people with terminal or potentially terminal conditions, I am glad that at least the AAS’ current webpage about “MAiD” indicates that the distinction it draws between “suicide” and “MAiD” is limited to people who are already dying.

But we know that the Oregon Model has been applied to situations that the AAS has historically worked to prevent. For instance, people with eating disorders have used Oregon model “MAiD” as a suicide method.

Moreover, the actual text of the re-posted statement acknowledges that in international jurisdictions, “MAiD” is allowed for “incurable” illnesses, without explicitly saying that this is bad. The equivocation in those passages makes it easier for expansionists to apply the AAS statement to their advocacy. This is especially true in paragraph 1, which acknowledges the existence of “MAiD” for people who aren’t dying, and paragraph 20, which makes the blanket statement that “a patient’s choice of PAD that satisfies legal criteria is not an appropriate target for ‘suicide’ prevention,” without reiterating that this criteria must include terminal illness. Even though the organization’s “MAiD” webpage, and other parts of the statement, indicate that the AAS’s statement is meant to apply specifically to terminal illness, there are passages that expansionists can cite to support their cause.

Perhaps this is why the resurrected 2017 statement helped redefine suicide in the 2019 Canadian Truchon court case. The judge in that case cited the AAS statement when ruling that the “MAiD” deaths of disabled people who were not dying would not be suicides, even though the United Nations and nearly every disability rights group in Canada say that that’s not true.

So the AAS’s statement has been used to effect what the majority of disability experts, and likely many people at the AAS, view as suicides, even if that wasn’t the AAS’s intention.

As I’ve said, I can respect the logic of well-intentioned people, even suicidologists, who draw a good-faith distinction between Oregon model “MAiD” and “regular” suicide. I also understand that the AAS’s scholars have done great good for suicide prevention, and they may have reissued the statement with the best of intentions. But that statement has harmed disabled people, especially when “MAiD” expansionists have used it to achieve their goals.

We can observe some of those expansionists beginning to acknowledge that their agenda does indeed involve suicide, such as when famous expansive “MAiD” advocate Thaddeus Mason Pope tweeted to me that the suicides of disabled people are good.

Moreover, the AAS’s 2023 decision to retire its 2017 statement indicates doubt about the content of that statement. It is not unreasonable to infer that whoever was in charge of the AAS Executive Committee at the time entertained the thought that there might not be such a strong distinction between ““MAiD” and “suicide” after all, or that the statement was undermining suicide prevention in some way; otherwise why retire the statement?

It will be valid for future discussions about the statement to note that the statement was created, then retired, then re-issued, which suggests disagreement among suicidologists as to its usefulness.

Moreover, as noted, the AAS’s statement has been celebrated by very aggressive extremists who believe in “MAiD” for disabled people who aren’t dying and for people with mental illnesses. Their position contradicts the position of the Canadian Association For Suicide Prevention, the International Association For Suicide Prevention, and the director of Canada’s 988 Suicide Prevention hotline, all of whom have said that “psychiatric MAiD” is suicide and should not be legalized.

Canada’s “MAiD” program encourages doctors to raise the possibility of “MAiD” with their patients-a practice that is now happening so regularly that disabled Canadians who find such suggestions offensive and disturbing have begun carrying cards telling doctors not to do this. I’m going to give the AAS the benefit of the doubt and assume that when they released their “MAiD” statement, that wasn’t what they had in mind.

Yet the AAS statement was cited in the 2019 Truchon court decision that expanded “MAiD” to disabled people without terminal illnesses and caused these scenarios.

I am sure that the AAS’s reissued statement will once again become one of the “MAiD” movement’s favorite talking points. But the statement must be assessed with respect to its impact, cultural context and inconsistency; it isn’t indisputably the rock-solid scientific consensus that “MAiD” proponents would like it to be.

Author Note 1: Here is an archived link to the retirement notice and a screenshot of that notice.

Author Note 2: Here is the complete text of the Truchon decision that cites the AAS statement.

Author Note 3: For a more in-depth response to the perspective of those who draw a good faith distinction between Oregon Model “MAiD” and “regular” suicide, see my blog post, “What Does Suicide Have To Do With the Oregon MAiD Model?".

Author Note 4: For peer-reviewed research on how “MAiD” intersects with the cultural trope that disabled people’s suicides are acceptable, see Professor Emily Lund’s 2016 article, “Is Suicide An Option? The Impact of Disability On Suicide Acceptability In the Context of Depression, Suicidality And Demographic Factors.”

“Euthanasia And Arbitrary Institutionalization Are Both Immoral”

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

As I’ve said, I think that one of the most effective ways to prevent euthanasia is for euthanasia opponents to be thinking about what kind of world we want people with disabilities to live in, and do what we can to link euthanasia prevention to creating a better world. 

Hence, I think it’s valuable for euthanasia opponents to be aware of the trend towards broad re-institutionalization that is happening in the United States right now, especially since we know that coerced institutionalization contributes to euthanasia.

Institutions often smell like pee. The odor of urine hangs in the air. If you live in an institution you might get the chance to do something fun once in a while, like make a craft or watch a TV show, but your options for recreation are limited. Your loved ones and friends might come visit you at designated hours. You eat whatever food the institution serves. Often if you want to go to the bathroom, an orderly will have to unlock the door for you. Maybe the person living in the room next to you screams constantly. Maybe your roommate died from a bedsore that became infected because there weren’t enough staff to take care of his needs. 

In many ways living in an institution is like living in prison, except the residents generally aren’t criminals.

So, as a euthanasia prevention advocate, I’m disturbed that apparently, that’s the world that Texas, Florida, Alaska, and the Department of Justice want for some disabled people.

As I’ve noted, a 1999 SCOTUS precedent called Olmstead LC. 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 in a humane setting, 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,” which helps protect disabled people from living in institutions just because that’s where the supports are.

But now, Texas, Florida, Alaska and the DOJ are fighting to let states design their home and community support systems in a way that would make many disabled people unable to receive the support they need without living in an institution.

This would be the case even when the disabled people aren’t a threat to themselves or others.

Florida, Texas and Alaska are the three states still clinging to the aforementioned Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit. The lawsuit threatens euthanasia-preventing healthcare protections for disabled people, but especially takes aim at simple, straightforward 2024 guidance about how to implement Olmstead’s mandate that disabled people who aren’t a threat to themselves or others be able to receive services in their communities.

These guidelines were also outlined by DOJ guidance in 2011 and 2020 and aren’t complicated: they define what community integration means and what states must do to achieve it. The regulations define what it means to be at risk of unnecessary institutionalization, and clarify that disabled people need not wait until they are unnecessarily institutionalized to invoke their right to community support. 

But the remaining Texas vs. Kennedy plaintiff states complain that implementing the updated community integration guidance will “add new regulatory burdens and imposes substantial costs on the state.”

(You know, like how the Canadian government sees disability services as a burden, so it’s incentivizing its disabled citizens to die by (MAiD) euthanasia?)

The Department of Justice has been conferring regularly with these states, and despite community integration being enforced by every administration since the Clinton administration, including the President’s first administration, the DOJ is apparently poised to give these states what they want and more.

Repealing the 2024 guidelines would be destructive enough, but the DOJ has now said that longstanding legal interpretations of Olmstead's community integration mandate are null and void: there is no community integration mandate; states don’t have to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.

For instance, having declined to enforce Olmstead, the Department of Justice has asked the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to vacate its ruling that Florida illegally withheld the community services necessary for medically fragile children to live at home with their families. A recent court judgment found that Texas violated the law by unnecessarily placing intellectually disabled adults in nursing homes, and the DOJ would like that ruling to be reversed. Alaska, the third state still pursuing the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, was found by the previous administration’s DOJ to have unnecessarily withheld community services from emotionally disabled children. The DOJ will likely seek to nullify that judgment as well.

Hence, the DOJ is failing to protect the same vulnerable people whose flourishing mis being undermined by the euthanasia movement, because that’s what the states of Texas, Florida and Alaska want the DOJ to do.

Incentivizing disabled people to die by assisted suicide violates society’s moral duties to people with disabilities. The current government’s approach to institutionalization also violates those principles. Coercing disabled people into institutions to get your political allies out of a legal pickle is an amoral thing to do.

A lot of people in the current government make vocal appeals to family and moral values. Is forcing intellectually disabled adults to live in understaffed nursing homes that smell like pee, and depriving disabled children of the opportunity to grow up with their families, consistent with those values?

I’m not writing about this issue to shame or praise people for how they vote; my commentary on how other disability issues are related to euthanasia is meant to be nonpartisan. I’ve met people from accross the political spectrum who care about disabled persons.

But recent government choices take steps toward creating a more limited and painful world for people with disabilities. Regardless of anyone’s intentions, making it easier for disabled people to be unnecessarily institutionalized contributes to a culture in which disabled people are so marginalized that offering assisted suicide seems normal and appealing.

It’s unjust to medicalize disabled people’s suicides in order to ease burdens on the medical system.

It’s also immoral for disabled people to shoulder the burden of living in institutions to relieve “regulatory burdens” on the state.

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: Here are the details about the updated Community Integration Mandate that is under threat. 

No One Has The High Ground On Disability Rights Part 2

By Meghan Schrader
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

No One Has The High Ground on Disability Rights Part 1 (Link).

Meghan Schrader

Like I’ve said, euthanasia falls on a spectrum of policies that marginalize and objectify people with disabilities. So, when I compare the policies of the United States and Canada, and look at the history of how American leaders from across the political spectrum have treated people with disabilities, I am tempted to despair about disabled people ever being any powerful leaders’ priority. This pattern of marginalization helps create the social conditions that make euthanasia seem like a legitimate solution to disabled people’s problems. 

We know that ableist institutional environments have contributed to coerced euthanasia in Canada. As I’ve mentioned, the USA Justice Department released a slip opinion saying that a 27-year-old federal community integration mandate that states provide enough community support for disabled people to avoid unnecessary institutionalization is essentially null and void; that mandate only forbids “unjustified” institutionalization and states can justify institutionalization however they want. 

In my opinion this development is selfish, bigoted and cruel. But the Province of Ontario in Canada has done the same thing with its More Beds Better Care Act, which allows euthanasia-eligible patients to be forcibly transferred to institutions far away from their families. 

In the past year and a half there have been several instances of USA disability policy regression that push disabled people towards bad life outcomes, and many disability advocates I know would go so far as to view the collective impact of these policies as a kind of authoritarianism. But the Canadian government taking over hospices that decline to participate in euthanizing disabled people that Canada has allowed to live in squalor and misery is no less authoritarian, especially when disabled Canadians have expressed the need for euthanasia-free healthcare spaces. “You had better kill people with disabilities on your property or the government will take over your hospice,” isn’t better than any disability policy being passed or suggested in the United States right now. 

Regardless of which political contingency most strongly influences US social policy, rhetoric that dehumanizes disabled people is everywhere. A conservative-leaning Catholic writer, JD Flynn, whose son has Down Syndrome, posted on X, “You’re not owning the libs by slurring disabled people.”

One X user tweeted back,

“As much as I understand your particular opposition to it, preserving the derogatory use of the word "retard" is in fact necessary for rejecting liberal control of language and defeating the euphemism treadmill which is taking over the English lexicon.”

Another X user wrote,

“Nobody calls disabled people retards anymore. They probably don't even remember what that word means. You're more likely to see a mentally handicapped person call you a retard for this post than to see one be offended by the use of the word.”

Bullies called me a retard when they threw rocks at me, pushed me into the dirt, used my blankie to clean a bathroom floor, pulled down my pants & said that they wished I was dead. I know what the r word means.

And disabled people who have been bullied with the r word do not exist to assist in “rejecting liberal control of language and defeating the euphemism treadmill which is taking over the English lexicon.”

Not that conservatives have a monopoly on this behavior. Remember back in 2008 when the leftist news site Wonkette wrote a despicable blog post about Trig Palin on his birthday?

If you thought that Governor Palin didn’t have the spoons to assume the presidency if Senator McCain died or if you loathed her policy positions that‘s fine, But it wasn’t ok for some liberal to create a vulgar meme taunting that in contrast to the many “retarded” things Palin had said, she had only given birth to one “retarded thing.”

It’s my experience that no matter whether society’s most powerful people identify as conservatives or liberals, leaders habitually ignore disabled people’s needs. This pattern helps create the social conditions for the euthanasia movement to flourish.

Social Death of Disabled Fuels Assisted Suicide Culture

Meghan Schrader

By 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.

What Does ‘Suicide’ Have to do with the Oregon "MAiD" Model?

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

Meghan Schrader

One time when I was testifying at an Oregon model "MAiD" hearing I decided to describe one of my episodes of psychotic depression in detail, to try to get legislators to observe parallels between what I was describing and the experiences of terminal illness that the proponents were describing. It struck me as a way to illustrate the overlap between the Oregon Model proponents’ logic that "MAiD" is a valid response to end of life suffering, and expansionists’ logic that “psychiatric MAiD” is a valid solution for extreme mental suffering.

Also, the Oregon "MAiD" model proponents describe disturbing physical symptoms at hearings all the time. So it should be ok for me to describe my past severe psychiatric symptoms, right?

The legislators looked at me kind of like I was high and then made comments along the lines that what I had described had nothing to do with the proposed law, but they appreciated my bravery in sharing my story.

I feel kind of silly about that testimony now. After all, I was describing severe mental illness, not a terminal illness like cancer. Also, maybe providing all those details came across as trauma dumping and attention-seeking. Perhaps it would have sufficed to say, “Having experienced mental illness in the past and observed expansionists efforts to legalize psychiatric euthanasia, I think society should not take another step towards that world by legalizing the Oregon model.”

But I still think that talking about severe mental illness and suicidal ideation during discussions about the Oregon model is less ridiculous than those legislators seemed to think. As disability rights opponents of assisted suicide have pointed out, the distinction between “terminally ill” and “disabled” can be blurrier than the Oregon model proponents would like it to be. There are some people who can live for years with their disabilities with the proper support, yet would die quickly if that support were withdrawn. And some of those people experience suicidal ideation. Moreover, there have been instances of people with mental illnesses like anorexia nervosa dying by assisted suicide. This abuse thins the distinction between “suicide” and assisted suicide” that the Oregon model proponents perceive.

Furthermore, some proponents have openly admitted that they want to medicalize disabled people’s suicides; famous euthanasia activist, Thaddeus Mason Pope told me so.

Nevertheless, I’ll entertain the position that there may often be meaningful distinctions between the “Oregon MAiD model” and “regular” suicide, with respect to the reasoning behind the decision, the possibility of graphic violence, the typical impact on family members, the length of time that the person had left to live, etc. So, I can understand why there are a lot of people who think that equating the Oregon "MAiD" model and suicide is “silly.”

I’ll again use my former pastor as an example. This pastor was a wonderful person and a dedicated faith leader. She did a lot of great work with marginalized people. She was also very anti-suicide. One time when I was sobbing in front of her about how much pain I was in during a bad bout of depression, she asked, “I don’t want to scare you, but as your pastor I need to know: are you having any thoughts about hurting yourself? Is there anything that we need to do to keep you safe?”

I wasn’t planning to harm myself, but I appreciated the compassion behind the pastor’s question.

This pastor also did a lot of terrific work with terminally ill people, and she disagreed with me about the Oregon assisted suicide model. When we had a friendly debate about the issue, she said, “Having been with people who have experienced a horrible death from Glioblastoma, I strongly reiterate my comments. And I hope that I would have the grace to make a similar choice.”

Obviously I disagree with the pastor, but I feel able to respect her motivations and logic. After all, she had had years of working with terminally ill people and I hadn’t. And she had worked with a lot of people experiencing suicidal ideation. So although assisted suicide and “regular” suicide both involve dying by one’s own hand (and hence meet the technical definition of suicide) I can “get where she was coming from.”

Unfortunately, not all assisted suicide proponents think like my former pastor. Some of them would like to expand assisted suicide to disabled people who aren’t dying. And that’s a situation where I think proponents’ distinction between assisted suicide and suicide is indisputably linked to ableism.

Disabled people are already systemically excluded from suicide prevention. Peer-reviewed research shows that there is a high suicide rate among people with disabilities and that people are more likely to think suicide is acceptable if the victim is disabled. There is also a lack of suicide prevention resources designed for people with disabilities. In that context, suicide prevention organizations equivocating on whether disabled people’s assisted suicide deaths are suicides falls into a longstanding pattern of abandonment.

The Oregon assisted suicide model proponents’ argument that assisted suicide is never suicide would be on much firmer ground if the Oregon model had never been used to kill people with anorexia, and if it were the only assisted suicide model that existed anywhere in the world. But it isn’t. Moreover, the Oregon model movement leaders routinely do things that normalize discussions about expanding assisted suicide such as by rubbing elbows with assisted suicide expansionists who have said that medicalizing the suicides of disabled people is ok. Compassion and Choices leaders cannot possibly have missed People Magazine and the New York Times’ enthusiastic platforming of people with chronic mental illnesses who would like to die by assisted suicide. Compassion and Choices leaders have published statements declining to take a position on whether Canada’s euthanasia (MAiD) program is ok, even though the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of People With Disabilities says that it’s not.

In short, although the Oregon model is ostensibly limited to terminally ill persons, it is helping to normalize the expansive proponents’ position that disabled people’s suicides are therapeutic.

Author Note: For a nuanced discussion of why what the Oregon Model proponents call "MAiD" is best described as “Assisted Suicide,” and why such “MAiD” is most accurately understood as a variation of suicide, read Harold Braswell’s article, “In Defense of "Physician-Assisted Suicide": Toward (and Back to) a Transparent, Destigmatizing Debate.”

I am proud to be an American. And I am not disposable.

The text of a speech by Meghan Schrader on July 3rd at an ADAPT of Texas rally to save the 2024 Final Rule’s updates to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Meghan Schrader

Meghan Schrader

Disability activist and member of the EPC-USA Board

I am asking Attorney General Paxton to show compassion and respect to disabled people by dropping the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, which seeks to have the 2024 Final Rule’s updates to Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act, one of our nation’s flagship disability access laws, declared unconstitutional.

Some decent people I’ve tried to talk to about Texas vs. Kennedy dismiss disability advocates’ concerns about this lawsuit as “woke hysteria.” But the accessibility guidelines that are outlined in the Final Rule are not “woke politics” or a culture war issue, they are a matter of human dignity.

The practices outlined in the Final Rule are necessary to meet the human family’s moral obligations to people with disabilities.

The Declaration of Independence says, 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Disability Inclusion: The Americans With Disabilities Act is Not ‘Liberal Fascism’

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

As I’ve said, I think it’s important that euthanasia opponents try to develop a cursory understanding and appreciation for disability inclusion efforts, especially in light of several recent policy efforts that are harmful to people with disabilities. This post is for “MAiD” opponents who may understand that “MAiD” harms people with disabilities, but also view statutes like the Americans with Disabilities Act as a burden or intrusion on personal liberty.

In choosing an example of such thinking, I found myself remembering a passage from assisted suicide opponent Jonah Goldberg’s 2007 book “Liberal Fascism,” in which he does a great job tracing the right to die movement’s roots in the eugenics movement, but then argues that the Americans With Disabilities Act’s effects on small businesses make the ADA “fascist.”

Goldberg writes:

“In Nazi Germany businesses proved their loyalty to the state by being good “corporate citizens,” just as they do today…let us concede that what the Nazi regime expected of “good German businesses” and what America expects of its corporate leaders differed enormously. This doesn’t change some important fundamental similarities. Consider, for example, the largely bipartisan and entirely well-intentioned Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, celebrated everywhere as a triumph of “nice” government.”

It’s not OK to compare the Americans with Disabilities Act to the policies of Nazi Germany, especially given the Nazis’ mass murder of the disabled.

Also, the Americans with Disabilities Act is not “nice;” it requires society to accommodate disabled people, even if some of the people doing the accommodating hate the disabled people’s guts. Because that’s what has to happen in order for disabled people to be fully functional members of society.

Goldberg goes on to complain:

“The law mandated that businesses take a number of measures, large and small, to accommodate customers and employees with various handicaps…Now imagine that you own a small, regional soft drink company. You’ve worked tirelessly toward your dream of one day going eyeball-to-eyeball with Coke or Pepsi. Proportionally speaking, making your factories and offices handicapped-friendly will cost you vastly more money, not just in terms of infrastructure, but in terms of the bureaucratic legal compliance costs (Coke and Pepsi have enormous legal departments; you don’t).”

Disabled people do not have an obligation to experience daily humiliation for a small soda business owners’ dream of going eyeball to eyeball with Pepsi any more than we have a duty to be demoralized and die for “MAiD” proponents’ designer deaths.

Goldberg laments,

“Or imagine you’re the owner of an even smaller firm hoping to make a play at your regional competitors. But you have 499 employees, and for the sake of argument, the ADA fully kicks in at 500 employees. If you hire just one more, you will fall under the ADA. In other words, hiring just one more thirty thousand-dollar-a-year employee will cost you millions.”

The Americans with Disabilities Act actually kicks in at 15 employees, but more importantly accessibility adjustments do not cost “millions.” There are also government tax incentives and grants to help small businesses offset the cost of complying with the ADA, but Goldberg does not mention that.

Overstatements about the expense of accommodating disabled people draw from the same “burden to society” trope that permeates “MAiD” ideology. Goldberg continues:

“The ADA surely has admirable intent and legitimate merits. But the very nature of such do-gooding legislation empowers large firms, entwines them with political elites, and serves as a barrier to entry for smaller firms.”

The ADA is not “do gooding,” it is one of the only tools disabled people have to ensure that we are treated with at least a modicum of dignity. To put it bluntly, it is selfish to try to consign disabled people to ignominy so that your small soda business can compete with Coca Cola.

Goldberg goes on to claim,

“Indeed, the penalties involved in even trying to fire someone can amount to guaranteed lifetime employment. Smaller firms can’t take the risk of being forced to provide a salary in perpetuity...”

No, that’s not how it works. No business provides “salaries in perpetuity” to employees with disabilities. The Americans With Disabilities Act requires that disabled people be “otherwise qualified” for their jobs and that accommodations not place an “undue hardship” on the employer. Employers are given significant latitude to decide which situations fall under these clauses and it is very easy for disabled people to lose our jobs. This causes the poverty that can push disabled Americans with life-threatening disabilities toward “MAiD.”

If Goldberg were disabled, he would like the Americans With Disabilities Act a lot more. In comparison to the experiences of disabled people who would not otherwise be able to enter a small business to buy a soda, a soda company’s desire to compete with Coca Cola is rather trite.

I mention Goldberg’s 2007 statement because I am wondering if the current American government has implemented or suggested so many damaging disability rights policies because many of its supporters are people like Goldberg who have said “Man, implementing laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act is a pain in the head. Could you eliminate them, or at least make their requirements more “reasonable,” please?

But maintaining a fair society requires some level of sacrifice from its members. Right to die proponents do not have the right to medicalize disabled people’s suicides so that they can die with champagne in their hands and small business owners do not have the right to undermine disabled people’s dignity so that their small businesses can compete with Coca Cola.

So, other euthanasia opponents, don’t be like Jonah Goldberg. If you want euthanasia prevention to fully promote the dignity of disabled people, demonstrate full support of laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“Emotional Support Animals, Assisted Suicide And Suicide Prevention”

Content Warning: Discussion of A Disabled Person’s Death By "Suicide" 

 

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader
Disability activist and member of the EPC-USA Board

As I’ve said, I think it’s important for euthanasia opponents to understand how disability policy impacts disabled people’s lives, how euthanasia can relate to those policies, and do what they can to advocate for better disability supports. So I am going to comment on the USA Office of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to not enforce/eliminate the Fair Housing Act’s protections for Emotional Support Animals.

My cat, Lucy, is my Emotional Support Animal. She is one of the best things in my life. Every night when I go to sleep, she curls up on the pillow next to mine. I place my hand against her smooth, soft fur and listen to the gentle rumbling of her purr. Often the anxiety and insomnia I struggle with eases and I am able to drift off to sleep. Every morning Lucy wakes me up by tapping me with her paw and nuzzling my face, as she makes little grunts and trills.

Lucy

Lucy also greatly contributes to my understanding of myself as a fully functional adult: Yes, my mental illness and neurological disabilities sometimes cause independent living struggles, but my cat is still alive and doing well, so I must be doing some things right.

So, Lucy is essentially a furry antidepressant that compliments the effects of pharmaceutical intervention. Residual symptoms of depression would be much less controlled if I did not have Lucy.

Unfortunately for people like me, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has decided not to enforce the Fair Housing Act’s provision for emotional support animals.

In addition to no longer investigating ESA Fair Housing Act complaints, HUD has indicated that it intends to update the FHA’s 1989 assistance animal regulations to exclude ESAs.

HUD now only wants to enforce the part of the FHA requiring landlords to accommodate service animals who perform specific tasks.

Service animals and ESAs are not the same thing. Service animals are trained to do complex tasks to accommodate specific symptoms of a person’s impairment that inhibit independent living. ESAs do not perform specific tasks but have long been recognized as important tools for people with emotional disabilities.

HUD’s actions increase my risk of having to choose between housing and my precious Lucy.

For instance, my low income makes it difficult to afford the pet fees that are waived for ESAs. My landlord could decide that since HUD no longer recognizes ESAs, I could not have Lucy in my apartment. Limiting protections for ESAs means that if I wanted to move to a new apartment for an education or job opportunity, landlords could deny me housing because of Lucy.

According to HUD’s memo, it might still be possible for tenants to seek redress under Section 504 and the ADA. But, one of the flaws in those laws is that neither contains explicit protections for ESAs. The ADA restricts its definition of assistance animals to service animals. This is the template HUD will now base its policies on.

I think some readers may perceive a proliferation of spurious disability complaints, especially around ESAs. But I can tell you from experience that the process of resolving any legitimate disability discrimination complaint tends to be drawn out and burdensome for the filer. HUD’s new blanket policy striking the Fair Housing Act’s provisions for ESAs makes any remaining ESA protections even more difficult to invoke. HUD has removed an important tool for ensuring that vulnerable people who need ESAs can have them.

Perhaps the best way to explain how this policy change relates to euthanasia prevention is to tell the story of “Jane.” Jane was a disabled Canadian woman with autism and depression that I met on #DisabilityTwitter. Jane’s severe depression, autistic dysregulation and various traumas caused chronic housing instability. When I met Jane, she did have an apartment, but the environment wasn’t suitable for someone with her disabilities. Jane was isolated from her family and experiencing poverty. One of the only sources of joy in Jane’s life was her cat.

At first, Jane was angry that Canada had legalized “Track 2 MAiD” instead of funding disability supports; participating in viral hashtags like #AidNotMAiD. But Jane’s mental health and housing situation gradually became more precarious. As Jane’s anguish intensified, she evolved into one of the only disabled Canadians I met on X who thought “Track 2 MAiD” was a good idea.

Lack of accommodations for depression and autism gradually eroded Jane’s sanity, until her tweets became a combination of volatile despair and heartbreaking pleas for help. Jane tweeted about having loud autistic meltdowns.

Rather than show compassion, neighbors fought to have Jane evicted from her apartment.

Many of Jane’s panicked tweets about impending homelessness were about her fear that she wouldn’t be allowed to take her cat to a homeless shelter, and she would have to surrender her cat to an animal shelter, “And then I’ll never see her beautiful face again!”

So, once she had enough evidence that homelessness was inevitable, Jane killed herself “the old fashioned way.”

HUD’s new policy increases the risk of these kinds of scenarios. HUD’s decision to restrict disabled people’s access to beloved emotional support animals will cause the USA’s most marginalized disabled people to suffer more. And that suffering will be just as real as the suffering of disabled Canadians having “MAiD” suggested to them in emergency rooms. Policies like HUD’s recent decision will contribute to the high rate of suicide in the disabled community. And those “regular” suicides will be just as tragic and preventable as the coerced “MAiD” suicides in Canada.

It is important that euthanasia opponents not support policies like this. If you want to save disabled people’s lives, protect our access to the things we need and love.

Author Note 1: For another essay about what Lucy means to me, see my blog post, Society Should Treat Disabled People Like My Cousin Treats Me and “It.”

Author Note 2: Apparently HUD website's entire page about assistance animals, archived by the Wayback Machine as recently as May 23, 2026, has been removed.
 

Author Note 3: Here is HUD’s memo about the rule change.

Author Note 4: Here is the Disability Rights Education And Defense Fund’s briefing on the rule change.

“The Final Rule, Death And Disability Exclusion: There Is Nothing New Under The Sun”

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is a disability instructor and a member of the EPC-USA board.

As I’ve said, the Final Rule, a 2024 update to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, especially Sections 84.56(a) and (b), contains some of the best regulations that the euthanasia prevention movement has had at its disposal in decades. Along with new opportunities for everything from home care to internet access, the Final Rule’s regulations elucidate what medical providers must do to make things like x-rays, mammograms, surgery suites, clinics, hospitals and other medical services accessible to disabled patients.

And in a substantial boost to euthanasia prevention, the Final Rule contains prohibitions on futile care laws, infanticide, and doctors “denying or limiting medical treatment based on the provider's belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than a person without a disability, or that life with a disability is not worth living.”

Yet, in the time since my last blog post about the Final Rule, there have been additional indications that these protections are at risk. As with the Final Rule’s protections for general internet access and better grievance system for disabled people struggling to access home care, the requirement that medical providers make their websites and apps accessible to disabled people has been delayed by the US Department of Health And Human Services.

The government has also indicated that it intends to “reconsider the substantive requirements” of the 2024 Final Rule more broadly. This suggests a risk that all of the Final Rule’s new healthcare accessibility requirements will be rescinded, just as HHS rescinded the Final Rule’s requirement that nursing homes maintain enough staff to prevent residents from experiencing bedsores and malnourishment.

This lackadaisical approach to healthcare accessibility is an absurd blow to euthanasia prevention.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has said that Canada’s euthanasia program is “abhorrent.” That’s great, but the government he serves seems happy to dismantle bulwarks against euthanasia.

This is not a partisan statement. Leaders from across the political spectrum make budget cuts and policy decisions that harm people with disabilities. I would write the same things about current disability policies regardless of who controlled the government.

Meanwhile, seven states continue to press ahead with the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, which seeks to repeal the Final Rule, especially its community integration mandate. This mandate is intended to prevent the unnecessary institutionalization of persons with disabilities. It does not require states to close institutions, but it does require them to institute new supports for disabled people at risk of being institutionalized. The plaintiffs are hoping to have a federal judge grant their petition without a full trial.

Texas, Florida, Alaska, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Montana, the states that remain involved in the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, base some of their argument on “states rights.” The states’ attorney generals contend that the Final Rule’s integration mandate encroaches on their “budgetary and policymaking discretion.” They decry the Final Rule's “mandate for states to redesign their Medicaid programs.”

This is an argument for convenience. Texas and Florida, for instance, have some of the highest numbers of institutions in the US; those two states would have to do a lot of work to implement the community integration mandate. Even if there are some people who require institutional care, these states lock disabled people in institutions who don’t need to be there so that the staff can keep their jobs. And the attorney generals in those states wish to export their states’ dysfunction to disabled people across the country, because in their opinion, the best policies serve what’s best for their states, not disabled Americans.

This is what moral theologian Charlie Camosy and Pope Francis call “throwaway culture.”

Euthanasia opponents come from all religions and no religion at all. But I am now going to draw on passages from the Bible because I know that a lot of euthanasia opponents view it as the guidebook for their lives.

In Ecclesiastes 3:16, Solomon writes: “And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there. in the place of justice—wickedness was there.”

Ecclesiastes 3:16 is a statement about the reality of human injustice. It observes that corruption and wickedness frequently occur in places meant for fairness and righteousness.

That is what is happening when leaders say they oppose euthanasia while dismantling social structures that prevent euthanasia.

Before “MAID” supporters start congratulating themselves on how much more sensitive they think they are to injustice, allow me to direct them to my previous blog post “Many MAiD Proponents Want Credit For Fixing Problems They Ignored For Decades.” Often “MAiD” proponents shout that their cause is a “social justice issue,” yet they have a history of ignoring disability justice.

That’s why they’ve helped create a world where disabled people are offered “MAiD” instead of support.

As I ponder the actions of policymakers who view disabled people as acceptable collateral damage, I find myself reflecting on Ecclesiastes 1:9-“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun.”

This pattern of regressive disability policy decisions is not new; disabled people have been experiencing the same ignominy for generations.

Of course there is a possibility that the Final Rule will not be repealed. Perhaps damage to the USA’s disability inclusion infrastructure can be prevented or repaired. I hope euthanasia opponents will work toward these efforts.

I urge readers to resist cruel policies that consign disabled people to what disability studies scholar Paul Longmore called a “social death.” Instead of allowing disabled people to be abused and ignored, society should base its disability policies on Isaiah 61:1-“He has chosen me and sent me to proclaim good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to captives and freedom to those in prison.”

Author Note:

It may still be possible to save the healthcare non discrimination regulations, and other parts of the Final Rule.

For information about how to contact your attorney general to ask them to drop out of the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, see this link.

To write to the US Department of Justice, use this link

To write to the Department of Health and Hunan Services, use this link.

For a quick explanation of what Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is, see this Drunk History video about the history of the law.

For a compelling film about the harms of unnecessary institutionalization, watch the 2014 movie Love Land.

You can find a 2023 video of Pope Francis discussing the inclusion and dignity of people with disabilities at this link.

To read the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s statement against the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, see this link.