Defeat of Connecticut assisted suicide bill linked to strong disability advocacy.

This article was published by the disability rights group, Not Dead Yet on March 26, 2018.

Cathy Ludlum: Second Thoughts Connecticut.

Great news: The Connecticut assisted suicide bill died in committee. This follows a similar victory in Massachusetts. Thanks to everyone who effectively communicated the very real dangers that a public policy legalizing assisted suicide poses to older, ill and disabled people!

On March 20, Second Thoughts Connecticut members held a press conference and testified against an assisted suicide bill, HB 5417 at a joint Public Health Committee hearing. Channel 8 covered their testimony: ‘Aid in dying’ bill back before lawmakers. They also interviewed Cathy Ludlum and Elaine Kolb. NDY also submitted written testimony.

Although the major print media ignored the outspoken opposition of the disability community, despite their consistent presence and activism against these bills as they were considered the last few years, one very powerful letter to the editor by Second Thoughts member Joan Cavanagh was carried by the New Haven Register:

Physician-assisted suicide harms the poor, elderly and disabled
Once again, a bill in Connecticut legalizing physician-assisted suicide was the subject of discussion at a public hearing on Tuesday, March 20. This year, it is HB 5417, with the Orwellian name, “An Act Concerning End-of-Life Care.” The well-funded “Compassion and Choices” and Secular Coalition of Connecticut promoters of this bill are trying to rally all “liberals” behind it under the false banner of “choice,” claiming that its only opponents are the extreme religious right and the institutional Catholic Church. As always, they deliberately refuse to acknowledge the disability rights community activists, Second Thoughts Connecticut, and the peace and justice activists who have opposed these bills for years.

Second Thoughts Connecticut has led the opposition. They don’t just “represent” people whose lives are at risk because their health care is “too expensive.” They are those people. Articulate, determined, and resourceful, they have mobilized year after year to protect their own lives and right to choose. They have also given me courage, aNnd so, from my personal experience in trying to get my elderly mother, a Medicaid patient with dementia, the care she needed to stay alive, I have written, spoken, and testified against this legislation since 2013. (The New Haven Register published my Forum piece about this (https://www.nhregister.com/opinion/article/Forum-Aid-in-dying-bill-neither-11375068.php), March 14, 2014.

We continue to clearly see these bills for what they are: another piece of the medical cost-cutting agenda that seeks to “ration” health care for the most vulnerable among us — the poor, elderly and disabled. As a life-long activist for peace and justice, it is beyond my understanding how anyone claiming human rights concerns could continue to advocate for this kind of legislation in the era of alt-right power, where the highest officials in our nation are slashing with impunity the most basic of our hard won, already inadequate, safety nets.

Joan Cavanagh
New Haven

• Second Thoughts Connecticut opposes Assisted Suicide Bill HB 5417.
• Nancy Elliott: Connecticut assisted suicide bill would legalize euthanasia.

Second Thoughts Connecticut Opposes Assisted Suicide HB 5417

This message was sent by the disability rights group, Second Thoughts Connecticut to the members of the Connecticut Public Health Committee,

Cathy Ludlum

Dear Members of the Public Health Committee,

With all due respect, and on behalf of our members at Second Thoughts Connecticut, we are writing to express our outrage that yet another bill to legalize assisted suicide is being raised this year.

Similar bills were raised in 2013, 2014, and 2015. Each one resulted in a grueling 12-15 hour hearing, putting great stress on legislators, the public, and especially on disabled people like ourselves, many of whom find it hard to travel and stay out for hours at a time.

Not only were these bills pulled each year before the JF deadline, but each time they were pulled earlier in the process, indicating that whatever support the concept may have had in 2013 had eroded.

Stephen Mendolsohn

This is not surprising. Initially, people often think that assisting someone to die is the compassionate course. Once they read the bill, consider its implementation, and understand the discrimination it entails, support drops. They have second thoughts.

It’s bad enough to have to go through this ordeal all over again. We were shocked to see that HB 5417 (An Act Concerning End-Of-Life Care) is exactly identical to HB 7015, which was heard in 2015. The only things that have been changed are the title and the effective date. All of the testimony opposing the 2015 bill is still relevant. If there are no new ideas, and none of our previous concerns have been addressed, why would the outcome be any different?

Furthermore, this bill deals with life and death. It was not taken seriously enough to draft a new bill, or even remove the reference in Section 18 to the Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities, which no longer exists. How much thought was put into the impact this legislation would have on our well-being?

We urge you to withdraw HB 5417. There is nothing new here, and this concept has failed to pass a single committee in three consecutive years. In baseball, after you strike out three times, you sit down for a while.

Thank you.

Cathy Ludlum and Stephen Mendelsohn
Second Thoughts Connecticut
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/secondthoughtsconnecticut/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SecondThoughtsConnecticut/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/2ndThoughtsCT

Connecticut Suicide Prevention Plan Includes Concerns About Disability & Assisted Suicide

This article was published on the Not Dead Yet website on November 18, 2015.

Stephen Mendelsohn

By Stephen Mendelsohn, a leader of the disability rights group Second Thoughts Connecticut

This is likely a first from the mainstream suicide prevention community: The Connecticut Suicide Advisory Board (CTSAB) recognizes that legalizing assisted suicide encourages people with disabilities to commit suicide. Here’s the relevant excerpt from the State of Connecticut Suicide Prevention Plan 2020 at p. 43, 44:

People with Chronic Health Conditions and Disabilities 

Living with chronic or terminal physical conditions can place significant stress on individuals and families. As with all challenges, individual responses will vary. Cancer, degenerative diseases of the nervous system, traumatic injuries of the central nervous system, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, chronic kidney disease, arthritis and asthma are known to elevate the risk of mental illness, particularly depression and anxiety disorders. 

In these situations, integrated medical and behavioral approaches are critical for regularly assessing for suicidality. Disability-specific risk factors include: a new disability or change in existing disability; difficulties navigating social and financial services; stress of chronic stigma and discrimination; loss or threat of loss of independent living; and institutionalization or hospitalization. 

Until recently, the CTSAB was considering assisted suicide of the terminally ill as a separate issue from suicide prevention. The active disability community in Connecticut, however, has been vocal on the need for suicide prevention services for people with disabilities. There may be unintended consequences of assisted suicide legislation on people with disabilities. Bill Peace (2012)** writes that “Many assume that disability is a fate worse than death. So we admire people with a disability who want to die, and we shake our collective heads in confusion when they want to live.” 

People with disabilities have a right to responsive suicide prevention services. The CTSAB intends to continue to explore the needs of the disability community for such services. 

Targeted Recommendations:

• Develop greater scrutiny of someone’s intentions to die.

• Identify and train practitioners to develop expertise in the work with disabled people who are suicidal.

• Do not “assume” suicide is a “rational” response to disability.

• Treat mental health conditions as aggressively as with a person without disability.

• CTSAB should encourage and increase participation from the disability community and encourage educational presentations.

Cathy Ludlum

Cathy Ludlum presented our issues to the CTSAB back in March 2014 and it appears they have taken our concerns about disability discrimination in suicide prevention seriously. Second Thoughts Connecticut is now listed on their website as a member. Other states still need our input into their state suicide prevention plans to include the disability perspective. Some states, such as Oregon and Washington (the first two states to legalize assisted suicide), have state suicide prevention plans that only focus on youth while ignoring elder suicide. Our success in Connecticut can be useful not only in encouraging a change in other states’ suicide prevention policies, but in making our case that what Compassion & Choices calls “aid in dying” is suicide that should be treated no differently merely because the person affected is old, ill, or disabled.

** This refers to the Hastings Center article by Bill Peace, an NDY Board member, entitled Comfort Care As Denial of Personhood.

Connecticut assisted suicide bill is likely dead.

Stephen Mendelsohn from
Second Thoughts Connecticut

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

For the past three years, the assisted suicide lobby in Connecticut has introduced an assisted suicide bill, paid lobbyists to promote the bill, and then a coalition of people opposing assisted suicide successfully defeat the bill.

Disability right group, Second Thoughts Connecticut, in coalition with other groups working in a unified manner, such as the Family Institute of Connecticut, have defeated the assisted suicide bills in Connecticut three years in a row.

An article by Daniela Altimari in the Hartford Courant states that assisted suicide bill - HB 7015 has likely died in committee again. The article quotes Michael Culhane who explaines how the bill was defeated:

Opponents have been counting votes since the bill was drafted in February and knew support was weak, he said. 

Culhane said the measure's failure to move forward was due to a large and diverse coalition that worked together to persuade legislators that the bill was bad public policy. 

It was a collective effort that produced the results that were announced today.

Stephen Mendelsohn, from Second Thoughts Connecticut, stated:

"We would urge the General Assembly to focus on improving hospice, palliative care and home care ... rather than continue to waste time on an issue that has now been rejected three years in a row without a committee vote,'' said Stephen Mendelsohn, a disability rights activist with the group Second Thoughts Connecticut. "Three strikes and you are out."

Assisted suicide bills, such as the Connecticut bill, are defeated when a unified coalition of people from differing perspectives and political ideologies work together for the sole purpose of protecting people from assisted suicide.

Thank you to the coalition leaders in Connecticut who successfully worked together again.

• Assisted suicide would be fraught with problems and abuses.
• Maggie Karner: Assisted suicide would undermine my cancer battle.
• Assisted suicide opponents meet in Connecticut.

Assisted suicide would be fraught with problems and abuses

This Op-Ed was published in the Connecticut Mirror on March 6, 2015.

By Stephen Mendelsohn, leader of the disability rights group Second Thoughts Connecticut.

The Public Health Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly has twice rejected doctor-prescribed suicide legislation after hearing testimony about the dangers it posed to seniors and people with disabilities. Some 140 attempts to legalize assisted suicide in other states have also been rejected.

Led by a vocal disability community, opposition to assisted suicide cannot be reduced to soundbites. Death is far too important for six-word slogans like “My Life. My Death. My Choice.” Instead, let us examine the real issues—the mistakes, coercion, and abuse that are inevitable and which cannot be fixed.

No assisted suicide bill proposed to date requires witnesses at the time of death. Bills do, however, allow the witnesses to the suicide request to be an heir and a close friend of that heir. There is no way to know whether the individual took the life-ending drugs voluntarily or was pressured. Existing laws have no investigative authority. Moreover, doctors are required to falsify death certificates, stating as the cause of death the underlying illness rather than the lethal prescription.

The case of Tami Sawyer and Thomas Middleton is instructive. Middleton had ALS and moved into Sawyer’s home, where he died a month later under Oregon’s assisted suicide law. Two days after the death, Sawyer sold Middleton's house and deposited the proceeds into her account. Sawyer pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering in a pyramid scheme. A second case involving Middleton’s estate was dropped only because she was already serving jail time. We will never know whether this was merely fraud or murder for profit.

So when proponents claim that there have been no abuses in Oregon, let us remember Thomas Middleton. Let us remember Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup, denied chemotherapy by Oregon Medicaid, which offered to pay instead for their assisted suicides.

Let us remember Kate Cheney, age 85 and with dementia. Although a psychiatrist concluded that she had dementia and was being pressured by her daughter, she died after taking the suicide prescription. Let us remember Michael Freeland, with a history of depression and suicide attempts, who was prescribed lethal drugs. Let us remember Patrick Matheny, Cynthia Barrett, David Prueitt, and Wendy Melcher. These are just the cases we know about; what about those that have gone unreported?

When proponents deny evidence of suicide contagion, let us remember that since its legalization of assisted suicide, Oregon’s suicide rate has climbed much faster than the national average. According to the Centers for Disease Control, for people age 35-64 from 1999 through 2010, the increase was 49 percent for Oregon versus 28percent nationally.

Let us remember that for mercilessly bullied autistic and LGBT teenagers, physician-assisted suicide sends the dangerous message that “my death” is “my choice.”

Let us honor Connecticut’s progressive tradition against discrimination by ensuring equal access to noncoercive suicide prevention services for old, ill, and disabled people, rather than offering suicide assistance.

And when proponents claim that this law is only for people who are mentally competent and have less than six months to live, let us remember all who outlived their terminal prognosis—often by years, even decades. Senator Ted Kennedy, Valerie Harper, Jeanette Hall, John Norton, and Rahamim Melamed-Cohen are better-known examples.

Let us remember the statements by leading proponents calling for expansion after this initial law is passed. When Compassion and Choices president Barbara Coombs Lee came to Hartford last October, she declared her support for assisted suicide for people with dementia and cognitive disabilities unable to consent. CT News Junkie quoted her saying, “It is an issue for another day but is no less compelling.” Dr. Marcia Angell, leading proponent of Massachusetts assisted suicide ballot question, recently wrote that she now favors euthanasia as well as assisted suicide.

Finally, let us remember our social interconnectedness. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

People with disabilities understand interdependence in our daily lives. We value everyone as having inherent dignity which is not lost by needing assistance with bodily functions like eating, dressing, or toileting. Our opposition to assisted suicide is based on basic civil rights.

Stephen Mendelsohn is one of the leaders of Second Thoughts Connecticut, a disability advocacy organization opposed to the legalization of assisted suicide.