Canada’s euthanasia legislation: From the perspective of a Canadian with disabilities

The following article was published by Ottawa Life Magazine on July 23.

Peter McGrath, a Counsel in the Department of Justice, gives
his opinion from the perspective of a Canadian with a disability.

By Peter McGrath

On Feb. 6, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s assisted suicide law, opening the door to physician-assisted suicide. This is an incredibly complex topic, one fraught with moral and ethical issues. Peter McGrath, a Counsel in the Department of Justice, gives his opinion from the perspective of a Canadian with a disability:

There are valid points to both sides of the debate on Canada’s euthanasia legislation. Steven Fletcher — a Member of Parliament from Winnipeg with a disability — is the most visible proponent of physician-assisted suicide in Canada. Some would argue his position has merit. Many people with disabilities live in fear of not being able to control the end of their lives. Poorly funded palliative care combined with the possible inability to make one’s wishes clear has led to many people living painful lives.

The occasional media horror story has magnified those fears tenfold. But isn’t the answer to fix the system, rather to provide people with a lethal end? Isn’t the answer to think beyond causing death and provide all of us — including people with disabilities — with dignified lives?

People with disabilities live far from inclusive lives in Canadian society. With low levels of education and employment, inadequate housing and transportation services, and even a medical system that is not designed to handle our needs, people with disabilities have a long way to go to be considered equal members of our society.

The new euthanasia legislation is intended to provide some level of control over ending our lives, yet it’s sad that we’ve achieved equality in death before we’ve achieved equality in life. In Canada, like much of the world, people with disabilities do not have sufficient access to education, transportation, housing, medical care, employment, or recreation and leisure activities.

First and foremost, what Canadians with disabilities seek is an end to inequality and an end to the lack of access to the basic quality of life enjoyed by average Canadians.

The positioning of people with disabilities in euthanasia legislation is somewhat off-putting. It is as if to say we define people with disabilities as suffering, and now they can have the option to end their life. People with disabilities are as much or more interested in their rights to life, because being disabled means living with a disability; it doesn’t necessarily mean dying with a disease.

All too frequently, people with disabilities can recount a time when a well-intended medical professional said to their parents that the disabled life of this baby or injured child would be one of suffering and perhaps not worth living. In effect, we have provided those children with disabilities the means to die before they have the means to live.

Physically and/or developmentally Canadians with disabilities remain a marginalized segment of Canadian society. Our interests lie far more in rights to leading productive lives of equality, rather than achievement in ending of life options.

• Catherine Frazee: There can be dignity in all states of life.

Belgium's sad assisted suicide path.

Published by OneNewsNow on July 22.

By Charlie Butts

Alex Schadenberg

An expert on the subject contends that Belgium provides ample evidence of the room to abuse euthanasia and assisted suicide after it is legalized.

Sign the letter of Hope to Laura.

One case in question is a 24-year-old woman in Belgium who has received permission to have her doctor kill her this summer. The reason is that she has experienced suicidal thoughts since childhood. Alex Schadenberg of Euthanasia Prevention Coalition International tells OneNewsNow that although her disorder is treatable, she decided to request suicide for another reason.

“In fact, you have the sad reality of a woman who has been suffering with suicidal thoughts, but at the same time she had a friend who also died by euthanasia,” he says. “You put the two together and [can see that] she's seeking to follow that same sad path. What she needs is someone who really wants to support her, who is going to journey with her, who is going to give her good counseling and support. She doesn't need death.”

He says that's how far down the path to a death mentality Belgium has gone, offering a lethal injection for someone who has treatable depression.

“Once you allow killing for one reason, there are many reasons people might want to die,” he says. “The only question is what are we going to say yes or no to, and in Belgium they've gone far down that road. It is better never to enter that road.”

Schadenberg says that's a warning not only to the United States but also to Canada, where doctor-assisted suicide was legalized this year by Supreme Court edict.

• Healthy 24-year-old Belgian woman to die by euthanasia.
• Letter of HOPE to Laura.

TV Ontario promotes assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Ontario government funds, TV Ontario,  a broadcaster that has scheduled to air the one-sided documentary "Gloria and Me", on July 29. The documentary is about Gloria Taylor, the woman whose case led to the dangerous and irresponsible Supreme Court decision that struck down Canada's laws protecting people from euthanasia and assisted suicide.

EPC does not oppose TV Ontario airing "Gloria and Me" but rather we oppose the one-sided promotion of euthanasia and assisted suicide by the media. TV Ontario is primarily funded by the Ontario government.

Send emails or phone TV Ontario (link) expressing your opposition to airing a one-sided documentary without providing equal time by airing a program against euthanasia and assisted suicide. They could at least have set-up a debate after the airing of the program.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are issues of life and death. It is in the public interest to always air all sides of this issue.

Link to a previous TVO program from 2011 that was fair and balanced.

The Oklahoman news rejects assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Aaron Kheriaty

The Oklahoman Editorial Board, on July 20, published a position opposing assisted suicide under the headline: Laws allowing assisted suicide can have far-reaching impact. 

California lawmakers recently debated assisted suicide bill SB 128, which the editorial began by noting, "has been put on hold." Part of the explanation why California lawmakers have paused to "rethink" the proposal was the analysis provided in a letter by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist who is director of the Program in Medical Ethics at the University of California Irvine. The editorial board noted that Dr Kheriaty explained how such laws "can lead to death to a far wider and often healthier population."

The Oklahoman editorial noted that Kheriaty wrote:

“The desire to end one’s life, or the request for assisted suicide, is almost always a cry for help,” 

“It is a distress signal indicating that something in the patient’s situation is not adequately being attended to — an untreated clinical depression, fear or anxiety about the future or about one’s medical condition, untreated or under-treated pain, family or relationship strain or conflict, and so on.”

Kheriaty wrote in his letter that:

80 percent to 90 percent of suicides are associated with clinical depression or other treatable mental disorders, “including for individuals at the end-of-life and individuals with a terminal condition.” 

Yet in Oregon... just 5 percent of the individuals who died by assisted suicide were referred for psychiatric evaluation prior to their deaths, “and this number is decreasing every year.” 

As Keriaty observed, 

“Considering what we know about suicide risk factors, this constitutes a form of gross medical negligence,”

According to the Oklahoman editorial:

research shows there is a “social contagion” aspect to suicide. Publicity surrounding one suicide often leads others to kill themselves. In Oregon, suicide rates are 35 percent higher than the national average.

Kheriaty wrote:

“The law is a teacher, and these laws send the message that under difficult circumstances, some lives are not worth living,” 

“This is a message that will be heard not only by terminally ill individuals, but by all vulnerable persons who are tempted to take their own lives.”

The Oklahoman then warned that:

Oklahoma is home to roughly 3.8 million people, and it’s estimated between 700,000 and 950,000 of those citizens need mental health or substance abuse treatment. Oklahoma is No. 2 nationally in the rate of mental illness among its populace.

The Oklahoman concluded its editorial opposed to assisted suicide by stating:

Assisted suicide laws effectively establish a two-tiered system for treating suicidal people. Those with suicidal thoughts who don’t have obvious terminal illnesses will be given treatment. But those suffering from suicidal thoughts who have serious physical illnesses will be encouraged to kill themselves. Yet in both cases, suicidal thoughts are often a sign of distress that can be resolved without deliberately taking the patient’s life. 

Last November, we wrote that the “strange new world of assisted suicide requires the blurring of moral lines beyond recognition.” Kheriaty’s analysis reinforces that conclusion, and demonstrates why Oklahoma and other states should not go down this dark path.

The Oklahoman editorial board has done its homework and people need to listen to it.

Euthanasia is not a human right in Europe.

The following article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on July 17, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Two cases were brought to the European Court on Human Rights hoping for a Canada-style EU-wide imposition of euthanasia as a fundamental right. Case dismissed. From the Telegraph story:

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a right-to-die case brought by a paralysed former builder and the widow of man who had locked-in syndrome. 

Paul Lamb and Jane Nicklinson, whose 58-year-old husband Tony died more than two years ago, brought the case at the court in Strasbourg – the culmination of their campaign that disabled people should have the right to be helped to die with dignity. 

But in a written judgment on Thursday, the court said: “In its decision in the case of Nicklinson and Lamb v. the United Kingdom the European Court of Human Rights has unanimously declared the applications inadmissible. The decision is final.” 

It comes after it emerged on Wednesday that two sisters are holding a party to raise £8,000 to pay for their mother to end her life in a Swiss clinic.

By the way, the, “Hey kids, let’s raise money for mom to kill herself!” party is off. 

I am very pleased by the decision. If this toxic death-dealing is to become legal, it should be through democratic processes. 

The Telegraph’s story about the case involved two people with serious disabilities. Despite that, the paper is running poll asking whether assisted suicide should be legalized for the “terminally ill.” So typical.

Canadian government appoints panel to examine euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Canada's Minister of Justice, Hon Peter MacKay, and Minister of Health, Hon Rona Ambrose, appointed an external expert panel to examine the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

EPC welcomes the external panel and we will urge them to make recommendations that will lead to the protection of every Canadian from euthanasia and assisted suicide.

On February 6, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada's laws protecting people from euthanasia and assisted suicide. The Supreme Court gave parliament 12 months to establish new laws.

Today, Harvey Max Chochinov, the Canada research chair in palliative care at the University of Manitoba was appointed to head the panel while Catherine Frazee, a former co-director of the Ryerson-RBC Institute for Disability Studies Research and Education and the former chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and Benoît Pelletier, a University of Ottawa law professor and former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister.

Dr Catherine Frazee

The Justice Ministry press release stated:

The panel will conduct consultations with medical authorities and with interveners in the Carter case to assist the federal government in formulating a legislative response to the Supreme Court's decision. The panel will also consult Canadians, including interested stakeholders, through a public online consultation. The panel will then provide a final report to the Ministers of Justice and Health that outlines its findings and options for a legislative response for consideration by the federal government.

EPC urged the government to appoint a "Commission" and to use the Notwithstanding clause to give us time to effectively legislate on these issues.

EPC will work with its coalition partners to submit a comprehensive response to the external panel. The external panel will report back to the government later this fall.

Assisted Suicide is not a private matter.

This article was published on the HOPE Australia website on July 16.

By Paul Russell, the founder and director of HOPE Australia.

Paul Russell

New Zealand born South African based euthanasia advocate Sean Davison is in the press again, once more seemingly stepping across the line into assisting in suicide.

In 2011, Davison was convicted in a New Zealand Court of assisting the suicide of his own mother in 2006, a matter that came to light in the review of a draft of Davison’s book, Before we say goodbye. Davison admitted in 2010 to crushing 18 morphine tablets and mixing it into a glass of water before handing it to his mother, who had cancer. He was committed to home detention for five months before returning to South Africa and founding a ‘right-to-die’ movement.

In September 2014, Davison admitted at the world ‘right-to-die’ conference in Chicago that he had assisted in the suicide death of a quadriplegic medical doctor in 2013.

Australia’s other ‘Dr Death,’ Rodney Syme, gave a talk at that event entitled: Challenging the Legal System – and getting away with it. Perhaps, Davison heeded Syme’s advice as, on that occasion, no charges were ever brought against him.

Only a few days before Davison made this revelation to his international cohort, on his Dignity SA [Dignity South Africa] twitter feed, Davison tweeted: 

“Dignity SA is committed to good palliative care. Assisted Dying (sic) is a last resort for a small % for whom palliative care is not enough.”

The doctor in question [Dr. Anrich Burge] was not terminally ill. So much for standards.

This week, according to South Africa’s IOL news online, an anonymous caller tipped off the Cape Times that Davison was about to assist in another suicide, this time of a person in hospice care, apparently in his own home.

When contacted by the Cape Times, Davison would neither confirm nor deny. However, he seemed to have effectively admitted that something was afoot by telling the press:

“Where did you get that information from? I cannot confirm or deny that. I can’t comment about (the patient). This is a private matter which should not be publicised in the media. 

“One should respect people’s right to die in a dignified manner. (The patient) has been suffering for a long time.”

Contacted again on Tuesday, Davison insisted on speaking only to the Cape Times editor, but his demand was declined and the news editor contacted him.

Asked if he would be involved in an assisted suicide on Tuesday, Davison said:

“I can’t comment on that. Who says there is a story here. He (the patient) doesn’t want this in the media. 

“This is a private matter. It is up to the patient if he wants this in the media. If you run this story, you are crossing the line.”

Davison may or may not have a point about privacy here; that ultimately would be a matter for the South African Press association. But, if true, it is Davison that has crossed the line, and a clear, bright line at that which prohibits assisting in suicide.

Department of Justice and Correctional Services spokesperson advocate Mthunzi Mhaga told the media that, 

‘if Davison was indeed assisting another person with suicide, he could be charged with murder’.

The unnamed source told the Cape Times that, 

“Davison would be using gas to end the patient’s life at 4pm on July 14 at a residence in Fresnaye.”

That little flag about the use of gas tells me that Davison knows that, so long as there is no evidence of him being at this person’s home at the time of death and no paper or email trail, he is not likely to see a charge raised against him.

Moreover, absent the call from the anonymous person, if the paraphernalia used to induce a hypoxic death is removed and if the gas of choice is nitrogen, there’s nothing to see. Absent an autopsy death would be assumed to have been from natural causes relating to the underlying condition. Even with an autopsy, there’s no ‘smoking gun’.

At this stage the welfare of the person in question is not known. But even if he does commit suicide and even if Davison assists, there remains another ‘if’ that Davison, it appears, may be relying on to avoid the dock. It’s called evidence, or, more precisely, the possible lack there of.

While having every sympathy for the person concerned, I hope that the anonymous caller will have averted this suicide.

Contrary to Davison’s assertion, this is a matter that should be discussed and should be reported in the interests of public safety.

European Court of Human Rights rejects assisted suicide case.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Today, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a case to overturn Britain's assisted suicide law.

The case was brought to the Court of Human Rights in Strasburg by Jane Nicklinson, the widow of Tony Nicklinson, a man who had lived with locked-in syndrome and Paul Lamb who had become paralyzed in an accident.

In rejecting the case, the European Court of Human Rights stated that:

the UK Parliament was "best placed" to rule on such a sensitive issue.

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick

On June 25, 2014; the UK Supreme Court also rejected an attempt by Nicklinson and Lamb to overturn the laws protecting people from assisted suicide. Not Dead Yet UK spokesperson, Kevin Fitzpatrick, responded to the UK Supreme Court decision by stating:

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are profoundly dangerous, irrespective of such hard cases, not least because they pose a very grave risk to thousands of disabled people who have been made vulnerable by cuts in health and social care services and welfare benefits, making some feel they would be better off dead and no longer a burden on their family and friends.

The British House of Commons will be debating a bill to legalize assisted suicide this fall.

Not Dead Yet UK recently sent a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron explaining why they oppose assisted suicide and organized a rally featuring an excellent speech by disability leader and actress Liz Carr.

Summary of Liz Carr's speech at Not Dead Yet - UK rally.

The summary of Liz Carr's speech was published by Dr Peter Saunders on his blog.

Not Dead Yet assembled at 10 Downing St.

People with disabilites descended on Westminster today in droves to lobby MPs on Rob Marris’s Assisted Dying (no 2) Bill.

Marris's assisted suicide bill is due for its second reading on 11 September.

Stand-up comedian and actress Liz Carr addressed the gathering and was introduced by former Paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.

They later visited 10 Downing Street to hand a letter to the Prime Minister.

The following is a summary by Dr Peter Saunders of Liz Carr’s speech. This is based on his (not fully legible) handwritten notes and does no justice to Liz's sense of humor and eloquence but at least it will give you the general gist. The talk was recorded so I will post a link to the video here once it has been produced. Any errors in transcription are his alone:

Liz Carr as Clarissa Mullery in Silent Witness.

Summary of Liz Carr's speech

We shouldn’t be fooled by the term ‘assisted dying’. This is assisted suicide. So let’s call it what it actually is. It’s about people having help to kill themselves.

The former name of Dignity in Dying (DID), the organisation pushing this bill, is the ‘Voluntary Euthanasia Society’. They will use any euphemism to distort the facts and disguise their wider agenda.

Their main weapons are misinformation, emotion and fear – fear about pain, dependence and disability. So we have to fight this fear with facts and truth.

Is there anyone in this room who wouldn’t prefer a pain free death with dignity? Of course not. We all want that. But this law is not the way to achieve it.

Assisted suicide is not about having a painless and pleasant death either. The drugs are unpleasant and they often do not work quickly. Far better to be in the hands of a doctor trained in good palliative care who can relieve your symptoms properly.

We are being cast as uncompassionate for opposing this bill. But we are not the people who lack compassion. We understand what it is like to suffer and to have limited options.

I’m able to speak here today because I am loud, articulate and have been on telly. But I speak on behalf of many who are unable to speak in their own defence – vulnerable and disabled people who don’t have access to the drugs, housing , social care, support and choice they would like.

Tanni Grey-Thompson

DID talk about having choice, but I speak for people who do not have a real choice. The proponents of this bill are offering a very narrow choice indeed to a very limited number of people.

If DID really believe in compassion then why don’t they use some of their millions of pounds of resources to ensure that everyone who is vulnerable or dying has good care and support rather than being steered toward suicide?

Anyone can have worth and dignity if they have proper care and support.

The term ‘right to die’ is rubbish. We are all going to die. What is really being talked about here is the right to be killed, something altogether different.

Suicide is already legal and everyone who is serious enough about it is already able to kill themselves. But this bill is about people who want someone else to do it for them. It’s about socially approved suicide. It’s about making suicide socially acceptable when it is actually something we should be trying to prevent.

Anyone can already kill themselves without assistance – by simply stopping eating, taking an overdose or even driving their wheelchair down the stairs. I’m using these examples to make a point – not suggesting that anyone do it. But the point is, why then do we need to change the law to allow people to be assisted to do what they can already do without assistance?

This bill wouldn’t actually help the tiny number of people like Tony Nicklinson who are unable to kill themselves. We will then be told that it is cruel to discriminate against these people and that we should legalise euthanasia as well.

We hear a lot about the term ‘slippery slope’. I don’t use this term because this widening of the law we see in every country that has legalised it is not a passive process. It’s much more accurate to call it ‘incremental extension’.

Let’s have no illusions about the wider agenda. I was in Luxembourg just after they changed the law. The MPs who were pushing for it wanted it for children and elderly people with dementia as well. But they knew they wouldn’t get it so they went for the softer target of the terminally ill.

It is no different here. DID say it is only for mentally competent adults with less than six months to live but think about the people they are using to make their case – Tony Nicklinson, Debbie Purdy, Jeffrey Spector, Paul Lamb, Terry Pratchett. Not one of them actually fits with their definition. None of them are actually terminally ill.

But through these cases they are softening up public opinion for a much bigger legal change.

They say they only want suicide for people with terminal illnesses. And yet they also say they want to prevent vulnerable people – say with mental illnesses – from committing suicide. But many people with terminal illnesses are not desperate to die and many people without terminal illnesses are.

So why do we have one law for one group and another law for the other? This is really just discrimination. It’s saying that it is good for people who are terminally ill to kill themselves – but bad for younger people with mental illness to do so.

But we can’t on the one hand push for suicide prevention for one group of people and encourage suicide for another group. This is a dangerous and confusing mixed message.

And just how workable will this law be in practice? Two doctors are supposed to assess whether a given patient has mental capacity, is terminally ill and has not been coerced. Think of how busy your own GP is and how well they know you. How can they possibly be expected to make an objective judgement about these things?

When I did my euthanasia tour I talked to people involved in the group Compassion and Choices – the equivalent of DID in the US. Their strategy was very clear – push for 10-15 years with stories of desperate cases and eventually public opinion will change and the law will follow.

DID are using the same techniques here and lining up all their celebrities to endorse it. They have all the money and all the media support. But we have no money and our only celebrities are me and the Pope!

I am terrified by this bill. I am terrified because as a disabled person I have experienced first-hand how poorly our society values disabled people. It's the same with elderly people.

I’m always been told, ‘If I was like you I’d kill myself’. ‘If I was like you I’d want to die.’ There are people who sincerely believe that people like me are better off dead.

But I don’t want to die. And to talk about choice when so many vulnerable and disabled people do not have a choice about basic care, housing and support is to put us in a very dangerous position indeed.

This is really serious. It’s about life and death. If this bill becomes law some disabled and vulnerable people will be subjected to exploitation and abuse and will die as a result.

The very reason we don’t allow capital punishment in this society is because the best police investigation and the best judges can come to the wrong conclusion and execute an innocent person.

This bill if passed will also mean that innocent people get killed. The current law protects people against this kind of abuse. It does not need changing.

I appeal to you to join me on 11 September in opposing this bill.

"Big Business" and Assisted Suicide

This article was published on the California Against Assisted Suicide website.

Margaret Dore

By Margaret Dore Esq., MBA*

Assemblyman Roger Hernandez was recently quoted as concerned that big business would use California's assisted suicide proposal, SB 128, to "guide people in that direction," meaning early death via a lethal overdose.

This is a valid concern.

I am an attorney in Washington State where assisted suicide is legal. Our law is based on a similar law in Oregon. Both laws are similar to SB 128, which seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in California.

In Oregon, it is well documented that Oregon's Medicaid program uses coverage incentives to steer people to suicide. See: Affidavit of Oregon doctor, Ken Stevens, pp 3-4. With legal assisted suicide, private health plans have this same ability. Dr. Stevens states:

If assisted suicide is legalized in [your state], your government health plan could follow a similar pattern. Private health plans could also follow this pattern. If so, these plans would pay for you and/or your family to die, but not to live. (Emphasis added). Id, ¶16.

Dr. Stevens also notes that the mere presence of legal assisted suicide steers people to suicide, which was the case with his patient Jeanette Hall. Her cancer treatment was fully covered, but with the existence of Oregon's law, she nonetheless became adamant that she would kill herself. Dr. Stevens convinced her to be treated instead. (Affidavit, ¶¶ 5-9). She is alive today, fifteen years later.

As for Assemblyman Hernandez's specific "big business concern," in 2013, a Montana State Senator made a similar observation:

I found myself wondering, Where does all the lobby money come from? If it really is about a few terminally ill people who might seek help ending their suffering, why was more money spent on promoting assisted suicide than any other issue in Montana? 

Could it be that convincing an ill person to end their life early will help health insurance companies save a bundle on what would have been ongoing medical treatment? How much would the government gain if it stopped paying social security, Medicare, or Medicaid a few months early? [it could actually be years earlier]. How much financial relief would pension systems see? Why was the proposed law to legalize assisted suicide [SB 220] written so loosely? Would vulnerable old people be encouraged to end their life unnecessarily early by those seeking financial gain?

Finally, there is the expansion issue. In Washington State, we have had informal "trial balloon" proposals to expand our law to non-terminal people. For me, the most disturbing one was in the Seattle Times, which is our largest paper. A column suggested euthanasia as a solution for people without funds in their old age, which could be any of us, say if the company pension plan went broke.**

Assemblyman Hernandez is right to be concerned about what could happen to his constituents if SB 128 is passed.

Don't let California make Washington and Oregon's mistake. Urge your legislators to vote "NO" on SB 128.

* Margaret Dore is a former Law Clerk to the Washington State Supreme Court and the Washington State Court of Appeals. She is a former Chair of the Elder Law Section of the ABA Family Law Committee. She also worked for a year with the United States Department of Justice. She is president of Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia. To learn more, see: www.margaretdore.com and www.choiceillusion.org.

** Jerry Large, "Planning for old age at a premium," The Seattle Times, March 8, 2012 ("After Monday's column, . . . a few [readers] suggested that if you couldn't save enough money to see you through your old age, you shouldn't expect society to bail you out. At least a couple mentioned euthanasia as a solution.") (Emphasis added).

Disability rights leaders and cancer surviver opposes assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In 2015, 26 states have considered legislation to legalize assisted suicide and all of them have defeated that legislation. Disability rights groups, Not Dead Yet, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and Second Thoughts are successfully leading the opposition to assisted suicide.

An article by Danielle Ohl and published by McClatchy DC  examines one woman's experience with cancer while explaining why disability rights leaders oppose assisted suicide.

Chastity Phillips
with her daughter.

The article begins with Chastity Phillips, a woman who is living with chondrosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer, since 2002 and now has Lupus. Unlike Brittany Maynard, Phillips chose to be treated. From the story:

Doctors told Chasity Phillips in 2002 that she had a 50 percent chance of surviving surgery. 

Her choices were certain death, her doctors said, or surgery to remove part of the tumor. 

She chose the surgery. Still, the return of her cancer was likely. Doctors told her she would have six months to a year before it grew back, requiring more risky followups.  

But 13 years later, Phillips is 38 years old and thriving, despite two very severe medical conditions.

Phillips developed a healthy philosophy about her possible mortality:

“There’s a certain freedom that comes with dying,” said Phillips, who lives near New Orleans. “You really don’t have to deal with your annoying cousin. You really don’t have to go on that family trip. You can eat ice cream for breakfast.”

Diane Coleman

The article then examines the disability rights community opposition to assisted suicide. From the article:

“The risk of mistake and coercion and abuse are really too great,” said Diane Coleman, founder and CEO of Not Dead Yet, an advocacy group that informs and lobbies on behalf of the disabled. 

To Not Dead Yet and the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund, this amounts to fear of disability rather than fear of painful death or lessened quality of life. 

The laws have a provision that bars physicians from prescribing a life-ending prescription to a person with disabilities simply because they are disabled. But opponents stipulate that the danger does not come from those with disabilities who might feel pressure to end their lives, but those without disabilities who fear becoming disabled or having a poorer quality of life.

Marilyn Golden

Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst with the DREDF acquired her disability after an injury commented on her personal experience. From the story:

“At the beginning, I felt that the injury was unbearable,” 

“A year later, it hit me: There was no change in my quality of life.”

Every state that has debated assisted suicide in 2015 have rejected the death bill. Recently the sponsors of the California assisted suicide bill pulled the bill after recognizing that it would be defeated in the House Health Committee.

• California assisted suicide bill died a peaceful death.
• Disability rights leaders opposes assisted suicide.
• Disability rights advocates fight California assisted suicide bill.
• Why disability rights activists oppose assisted suicide.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cp

Not Dead Yet - UK: Open letter to David Cameron

This letter was written by Not Dead Yet UK to British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Prime Minister David Cameron

Dear Prime Minister

We are hugely grateful for your stated personal opposition to legalising assisted suicide, especially in light of the forthcoming ‘Marris Bill’ (September 11, 2015) in the House of Commons. We are however deeply concerned about the intention to have a ‘free vote’ at that time. That such that a law might be passed with such consequences, especially for vulnerable and disabled people, on the strength of ‘individual conscience’, is very worrying indeed.

We imagine that you already know that no Disabled Person’s Organisation (DPO) has favoured a change in law to permit third party intervention in any individual’s end-of-life decisions. Not Dead Yet UK is the lead DPO speaking out in Britain, and e.g. in the US disabled colleagues have been clear in rejecting such laws, for reasons of their consequences. Legislators there have almost universally turned away from their intentions to legalise assisted suicide once they are fully informed of those consequences.

Through rigorous research, we have gathered a body of evidence that such laws are not only dangerous, leading to the deaths of disabled people, but they also fundamentally depend on the stated views of their ‘architects’ in other jurisdictions, that our disabled lives are ‘not worth living’. This is paradigmatic disability discrimination – fatal discrimination in this instance.

Certainly some disabled individuals, like some non-disabled people, do come to seriously consider dying early, but disabled people will sometimes reflect their communities, discussions in the public domain and other factors. While we respect their views, we are at pains to distinguish a very few individual voices, supported by a wealthy pro-assisted suicide lobby, from our collective view. The effect of any law is to cover every citizen. Extension of the law’s reach, once passed, is almost immediate to those supposedly never intended to be ‘beneficiaries’ of them.

We see the lack of universally available best palliative and social care, and critically the right kind of human support, as core to what leads many people to despair of their futures, however long or short they may be. When the only choice available to someone in despair is death, we count that as no choice at all. The rhetoric around choice an autonomy is just that – rhetoric. Choice is an illusion, and the proposed law places all the decision-making power in the hands of doctors anyway, removing it from patients.

Not Dead Yet assembled at 10 Downing St.

Pain we know and even Lord Falconer has now publicly admitted, is not the issue that leads most people to ask for an untimely death – feeling themselves ‘to be burden on others’ is the biggest driver (e.g. 61% in Washington State, US which has a law very similar to the ones proposed so far). We expect no great differences in the terms of the Marris Bill, unless it attempts to subvert our opposition by pretending there can be ‘safeguards’.

Additionally, Lord Falconer’s own self-styled ‘commission’ reported clearly that ‘assisted dying’ is ‘a compendium term’ for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia (Demos 2012, p39). So a vote for an assisted suicide Bill that mimics his, as we expect Marris’s will in essence, will be a vote for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. We understand that the public at large do not understand this nuance but we hope it should not be lost on your parliamentary colleagues.

We must widen understanding of the dangers of legislating in the face of media insistence in exploiting ‘hard cases’ which generate natural waves of public sympathy. Those people who appear have our every empathy too, from our lived experience as disabled people. But, for example, Oregon is chosen as the paragon of such a law working well. when again we have a body of evidence to demonstrate the anomalies, the abject failures of so-called ‘safeguards’, and what occasionally surely amounts to cruelty in implementation: a depressed patient whose GP knew him well over many years and declared him not to be a suitable candidate for Oregon’s assisted suicide programme but who ‘doctor-shopped’ and found another doctor who knew him not at all – the patient was dead weeks later. Or the patient who had no private health insurance and who received by letter the news that the state would not fund his drugs for terminal cancer. He was informed by this same letter that he qualified for the assisted suicide programme. There are many more factors: no doctor is required to be present when the patient finally takes their final lethal dose (sometimes years later – so much for the six months to live prognosis). No investigation is permitted post-mortem, which begs the question, who could know if there was suggestion, coercion, or even murder.

Thankfully the proportion of doctors who say they would be willing to perform such acts remains very small. But that will increase dramatically should a law be passed – the act involved, providing suicide assistance will be legal – self-questioning will become redundant. The short step to people claiming they cannot do the final act themselves, challenging the by-then existing law to ‘grant them their rights’ too, will follow swiftly. Voluntary euthanasia will supplement what the courts already allow, non-voluntary euthanasia (typically, switching off life-support), and we will find involuntary euthanasia, the final peg, ‘helping’ people with Alzheimer’s Disease for example, to die will arrive soon after. We will have the full panoply of a Belgium in just a few years.

We are convinced that the law in Britain as it stands provides for those who are serious in their intent to die whilst protecting all those who become vulnerable when faced with such terrible end-of-life issues. The best protection against these developments is keeping the first steps illegal.

We seek further dialogue over these pressing matters, with yourself if at all possible, with your colleagues, officials, to hear our evidence-based concerns and how they are so integrally associated with this terrible desire to offer State sanction to assisted suicide.

Please accept our letter to you as another way to fulfil our aspiration to have an intelligent debate about assisted suicide/euthanasia in our country. This is about the kind of society we want to live in – disabled people more than any other group are under threat. Patient safety remains at the heart of good clinical governance in best medical practice. We too need to be safe.

On behalf of Not Dead Yet UK, we remain

Yours sincerely

Baroness Jane Campbell
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson
Liz Carr, Actress
Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, OBE
Dr Phil Friend, OBE
Sian Vasey

Experts in care of the elderly speak out strongly against assisted suicide

This article was published by Dr Peter Saunders on his blog on July 13, 2015.

Dr Peter Saunders

Peter Saunders is a founder of the Care Not Killing Alliance.

The leading organisation representing health professionals caring for the elderly in Britain has this last week spoken out strongly against the legalisation of assisted suicide.

The British Geriatrics Society is the professional body of specialists in the health care of older people in the United Kingdom.

It has over 2,750 members worldwide and draws together experts from all the relevant disciplines in the field - doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and scientists.

In a powerful statement issued on July 10 the society says that whilst it respects that patients have a ‘right’ to determine the choice of treatment and care they receive and some symptoms are ‘difficult to control’ a policy which allows physicians to assist patients to die is ‘not acceptable’.

Speaking from the experience of caring for ‘many older people with frailty, disability and those who are dying’ the experts ‘accept life has a natural end’ and believe that their job is not to ‘prolong life at all costs’ but to ‘improve quality of life’ whilst accepting that death is inevitable.

They express deep concern that many requests to end life come directly or indirectly from the patients’ families and not the older person themselves: ‘Often such requests are then forgotten if such degrading symptoms as urinary and faecal incontinence, depression and unremitting pain are relieved.’

They argue that the clear priority is ensuring that the best possible care is available.

They observe that much of the public demand for assisted dying seems to stem from ‘the fear of a prolonged death with increasing disability sometimes associated with unwanted burdensome medical care’.

Suicide promotion has led to more youth suicide in Australia.

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Philip Nitschke has been promoting assisted suicide for many years. Recent statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that Nitschke's is promotion of suicide techniques has led to many younger people dying by suicide.

The Sydney Morning Herald featured the story of Lucas Taylor (26) who died in 2012, after receiving suicide assistance from Nitschke and his group.

Judith Taylor, the mother of Lucas, told the Morning Herald:

Twenty-six-year-old Lucas Taylor took his own life by taking Nembutal more than three years ago, but he still gets Exit International's email newsletter. 

Judith Taylor, the mother of Lucas.

After his death in 2012 his mother Judith went through his emails looking for answers and found he had been a paid up member of the organisation. 

the deaths among younger people were an "unintended consequence" of the voluntary euthanasia movement putting out information online on suicide methods.

Nembutal is a veterinary euthanasia drug. 

According the Sydney Morning Herald:

New data from the national coronial information system shows 120 people died by taking Nembutal .. between July 2000 and December 2012. 

The deaths included one person under the age of 20, 11 people in their 20s and 14 people in their 30s. 

Voluntary euthanasia campaigners say the actual number of Nembutal deaths is even higher, as many deaths are not reported to the coroner and people who use the drug to take their lives take steps to make it look like the death is of natural causes.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts contact Your Life Counts.

Nitschke is also fighting to keep his Australian medical license. There have been 12 complaints to the Australian Medical Board concerning Nitschke and his group Exit International. 

Judith Taylor submitted one of those complaints. Taylor told the Medical Board that:

her son had been coached in how to take his own life by forum members who exchanged information on the particulars. 

There was no one present to urge restraint or at least some second thoughts about the permanency of suicide, other possible options and the fact that he would be wrapping up his pain and passing it on to his family for the rest of their lives. 

It is the worst of the worst. To find your son has died is bad enough but to find out it was by his own hand and then to find out there is an international business that promotes it, coerces it and provides all the info was worse.

Nitschke's has been promoting veterinary euthanasia drugs for many years. In June 2010 I commented on a study from Victoria Australia that found:

... of the 51 people who were known to have died from Nembutal, 6 people were in their 20's, 8 people were in their 30's, 5 people were in their 40's, 14 people were in their 50's, 3 people in their 60's, 10 in their 70's, and 5 people were over the age of 80. 

... of the 38 known deaths that were investigated by a coroner, only 11 had a significant physical illness or chronic pain with the remaining 27 cases showing no signs of physical problems. 

The report suggested that the 27 otherwise healthy people who died from Nembutal use were most likely depressed or mentally ill.

Paul Russell, the director of HOPE, an organisation devoted to preventing euthanasia and assisted suicide, said the data was concerning and something suicide prevention organisations should be heeding.

We need to find more effective ways of helping people [who] are feeling desperate from going to these clandestine organisations.

The fact is that Nitschke recklessly abandons vulnerable people who deserve social, and psychological support, excellent care, effective pain management and a caring community.

• Nitschke continues to promote lethal veterinary drugs.
• Philip Nitschke is being investigated in 20 deaths.
• Nitschke: An undetectable death or murder?