True Dignity Vermont is a grassroots, independent, citizen-led initiative in opposition to assisted suicide in Vermont. Vermonters deserve true dignity and compassion at the end of life, not death and abandonment. Killing is not compassion, and True Dignity Vermont will work to ensure our end-of-life choices respect the dignity of all Vermont citizens.
The Patient Rights Council reported on May 15 that the assisted suicide bill recently introduced in the NY Assembly has been withdrawn by its sponsor.
Since some of us were out of state when the assisted suicide bill was finally defeated in the Vermont Senate, we have been reviewing articles published at the time. We liked Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s comment to the VT Digger article on the defeat. Cohen-Rottenberg, until very recently, maintained a blog called Journeys with Autism (www.autismandempathy.com). In her comment, copied in italics below, she takes Vermont Digger to task for failing to note in the article that people with disabilities, not just religious people and doctors, strongly oppose assisted suicide. Thank you Rachel! The whole article, with comments, can be read at http://vtdigger.org/2012/04/12/death-with-dignity-bill-falls-on-senate-floor/.
Your article fails to mention that it is not just medical organizations and religious people who are against the bill — many people with disabilities, and our organizations, have been against the bill from the beginning. The fact that the disability rights issues inherent in the bill never appear in the article, and that no mention is given of the opposition to the bill of groups like Disability Rights Vermont, is indicative of the problem with the bill itself: a failure to take our concerns seriously and discuss all of the implications of the bill for our lives. Our erasure from the discussion of the bill does not bode well for having our voices heard should such a bill ever become law.
We just got the new issue of the Patients Rights Council newsletter, with an excellent article about the defeat of the 10th attempt to legalize assisted suicide in our state. The Patients Rights Council article contains excerpts from the Burlington Free Press’s April 13 editorial praising the defeat of assisted suicide on the grounds that it changes the doctor/patient relationship in a fundamental way, that essential oversight would be hampered by the withholding of information required to satisfy “privacy” concerns, and that the bill would require us to trust a state government that has proven itself incompetent to police much less consequential matters than the life and death one of assisted suicide. Our favorite point from the editorial: “There is no arguing that each person, of sound mind, should have a strong say in how and when his or her life should end. The equation changes drastically, when you seek outside help to end your life.”
Here are links to both articles:
http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Update_2012_2_2.pdf
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012120412028
Proponents of assisted suicide in Vermont are scrambling to put a positive take on this years defeat.
Dick Walters, president of Patients Choices at End of Life Vermont, wrote a guest blog editorial for Death With Dignity National Center on May 8th, claiming that the majority of Vermonters support assisted suicide and that there was progress and real momentem in Vermont this year. Mr. Walters states that the progress made and momentem for passage is clear, although it is completely unclear what progress and momentum he is referring to.
The facts remain as this:
- Legislation to legalize assisted suicide in Vermont was defeated in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- The legislation was afforded a fair hearing, and was still defeated.
- Opponents at this hearing outnumbered proponents by at least 3 to 1.
- The legislation was opposed by both the Vermont Medical Society, and disability rights groups.
- Proponents of assisted suicide then tried a sneaky back-handed maneuver to attach language legalizing assisted suicide to a piece of legislation regulating tanning beds.
- This resulted in an embarrassing defeat for proponents. At times supporters were left stammering and completely unable to defend the legislation, even asking for a recess to regain composure.
- The maneuver was defeated by a full senate vote of 18 to 11.
- A broad coalition of both Republicans and Democrats opposed the legislation.
- Twice this year, supporters of assisted suicide have failed to convince Vermont Senators to support their legislation.
Last week, Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, debated Wanda Morris from Dying with Dignity about assisted suicide in Saskatoon, Canada. While the issue of assisted suicide has quieted down a bit in Vermont, it is presently at the center of heated political debate in Canada where the Rasouli Case is now in the Supreme Court of Canada. Congratualtions to Alex for a fine debate.
Recently, Margaret Dore from Choice is an Illusion, also debated Wanda Morris from Dying with Dignity. That debate is available to view on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz89dFU_rig&feature=relmfu
Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition wrote the following article encouraging Massachusetts to follow Vermont’s lead in defeating assisted suicide, commending the work of True Dignity Vermont. As you likely know, Massachusetts will have a ballot initiative to legalize assisted suicide in their state this coming November, 2012.
Massachusetts should follow the lead of Vermont by defeating assisted suicide Initiative
by Alex Schadenberg
http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2012/05/massachusetts-should-follow-lead-of.html
May 1, 2012
Massachusetts citizens will be voting on an Initiative to legalize assisted suicide on the November 2012 ballot. Opponents of the Initiative are urging the voters in Massachusetts to reject this proposal, in the same way as the Vermont legislature has consistently rejected attempts to legalize assisted suicide.
True Dignity Vermont, among others, has successfully defeated attempts to legalize assisted suicide in their state over and over again. This Spring the assisted suicide bill was defeated in the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee and then it was re-introduced through the back-door linked to a Tanning Bed regulation bill resulting in it being defeated again by a vote of 18 to 11. In fact, legislation attempts to legalize assisted suicide have been introduced, debated and defeated on several occasions over the past few years in Vermont even though Governor Peter Shumlin has promised to legalize assisted suicide.
Kristian Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute stated to the Catholic News Service:
“We’re obviously elated that the Senate in Vermont did the right thing, not only to defeat this onerous bill but also to defeat the political shenanigans that were going on to try to get this bill passed. The whole thing was politics at its worst,”
Polling indicates that it will be difficult to defeat the assisted suicide Initiative in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In March, Public Policy Polling released results that showed 43 percent of Massachusetts voters are in favor of assisted suicide, while 37 percent are opposed. The polling indicated that younger people were more likely to support assisted suicide.
Second Thoughts, a disability rights group that opposes assisted suicide, is organizing a strong campaign against assisted suicide in Massachusetts.
Second Thoughts is organizing a educational and organizational meeting on Saturday, May 19 from 2:00 – 4:30 pm at the Cambridge Senior Center in the main floor ballroom (806 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA).
The Second Thoughts website effectively explains why they oppose assisted suicide.
Thanks for the nice article Alex! You may Alex’s blog at http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/ or the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s website at http://www.epcc.ca/
Good news out of Georgia where Governor Nathan Deal yesterday signed House Bill 1114 into law, banning assisted suicide in Georgia. We alerted you last month to contact the Georgia Governor asking him to sign HB 1114 in light of heavy pressure from Compassion & Choices to veto the legislation. Thank you for your efforts, and congratulations to the people of Georgia for protecting their citizens from assisted suicide.
Here is our answer to a question posed in response to the excellent True North article we posted yesterday. “What about the rights of terminal people in great pain?”
Let’s be clear about a few things regarding the “rights of terminal patients in great pain”.
1. When we consider the law that was proposed and defeated in Vermont, we are not talking about suicide but about assistance in suicide. A person who commits suicide is not breaking any law. We try to help people who try and fail to commit suicide; we do not fine them or put them in jail, though we may sometimes commit them to a psychiatric facility and restrict their freedom in order to protect them from themselves. All people have problems, and a terminal diagnosis is simply another human problem: whether a person has a terminal diagnosis or not makes no difference and should make no difference in the way society treats his suicide or attempts at suicide.
2. If a person is determined to commit suicide, no one can stop him. The fact that the suicide rate is high without legalization of assistance in suicide speaks for itself.
3. A terminally ill person receiving medications for pain has ample means to commit suicide without “violence to himself”. He is likely to possess some of the same drugs that would be prescribed in lethal doses if assistance in suicide were legalized. All he has to do is save them up. If a person wants to have the oft-cited “security” of knowing he can kill himself if he decides his problems are too much to bear, he can save prescription sleeping medications, which he can get without a terminal diagnosis. One proponent of assisted suicide wrote that his relative who committed suicide when she became terminally ill had done this for years; obviously she was a suicidal person.
4. Patients who request assistance in suicide where it is legal do not cite “extreme pain” or the fear of it among their top reasons. According to the Oregon reports, the top reasons for wanting to commit suicide are fear of losing autonomy and fear of not being able to do things one considers enjoyable; these reasons resemble “needing to impose on family for everything care for long weeks”. Can we as a society not come up with a solution for fear of dependency that is more humane than assistance in suicide, especially since, as the commentator seems to admit in citing the article’s “good points”, legalization would present a threat to the elderly, people with disabilities, anyone feeling despair, the poor, and in fact everyone facing a time in life that will inevitably arrive for us all, a time when we have to stop denying what was always the case anyway; people need other people. That’s a reality proponents of assisted suicide seem determined to ignore, but it is reality nonetheless.
The following is an excellent article detailing many prominent problems with assisted suicide, written by Gerhard Meyer and posted on TrueNorthReports.com on April 30:
http://truenorthreports.com/death-with-dignity-an-ideology-that-is-on-life-support
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‘Death with Dignity’ Bill promises only indignity
May 16, 2012 by Administrators
Below the line is an excellent article we somehow missed posting when it appeared in the Brattleboro Commons (http://www.commonsnews.org/site/site05/story.php?articleno=3197&page=1) in March 2011. The points it makes are just as valid now as they were then.
Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg is a writer, a disability-rights activist, and the leader of the Southern Vermont Self-Advocacy Coalition. She can be reached at rachel@sojournerartist.com.
Originally published in The Commons issue #93 (Wednesday, March 23, 2011).
________________________________________
“The least costly treatment for any illness is lethal medication.”
–Walter Dellinger
Brattleboro
When I was younger, I fully supported physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill people. I believed that people who are dying should be able to decide when and how the end arrives, and that physicians should be able to make the process as painless and as dignified as possible.
After all, isn’t the decision to end one’s life a personal one? Doesn’t the right of self-determination dictate that one should have control over deciding the manner of one’s death?
If physician-assisted suicide had no consequences beyond the life of the person in question, the answer to both questions would be a resounding “Yes.”
But living in society means that when a decision has a serious, negative impact upon the lives of others, we must limit a person’s ability to carry it out.
And so, as I reflect upon the consequences of legalizing physician-assisted suicide, I now find myself against it.
The so-called “Death with Dignity” bill before the Vermont Legislature, if passed into law, would have a profoundly negative impact upon the lives of people who do not wish to avail themselves of its provisions.
In reading the bill, I find myself deeply troubled by the criteria by which one is eligible to choose physician-assisted suicide.
So long as the patient is fully competent to make an informed decision, the only requirements are that he or she “must have a terminal illness and must have fewer than six months left to live.” A terminal condition is defined as “an incurable and irreversible disease which would, within reasonable medical judgment, result in death within six months.”
Now, in almost all discussions that I have ever had in my lifetime about this issue, proponents of physician-assisted suicide have argued that it is simply inhumane to allow a human being to live in a state of agony, and that physicians must provide a quick and painless way out. The possibility of unendurable pain has always formed the basis on which most people have argued for the right to die.
But the “Death with Dignity” bill says nothing about ending one’s physical pain.
This omission may derive from the fact that most kinds of physical distress can now be managed by medication; except for certain kinds of neuropathy, it would be difficult to identify a condition that would cause untreatable levels of pain. If such is the case, why would someone with six months to live want to end his or her life prematurely?
The answer lies in the word “dignity.”
The bill’s proponents argue that one should be able to maintain one’s dignity in the dying process. And what are considered the barriers to dignity?
In reading the words of those who support physician-assisted suicide, I have learned the following: It is considered undignified to be unable to toilet oneself. It is considered undignified to wear a diaper. It is considered undignified to be in a wheelchair. It is considered undignified to be dependent on the care of others. To some, it is even considered undignified to no longer be able to participate in so-called “normal” activities.
By implication, the bill suggests that finding oneself in any of these conditions is a perfectly valid reason to commit suicide.
I find this kind of reasoning both dangerous and deeply insulting.
There are many, many disabled people who are unable to toilet themselves, who wear adult diapers, who use wheelchairs, who depend upon the care of others, and who cannot participate in the activities that typically able-bodied people take for granted. And, as should be obvious to all thinking people, their lives have the same inherent dignity and meaning as the lives of other human beings.
That we equate dependency and the wrong undergarments with indignity is nothing more than our own cultural blindness. It is a choice that we make as a society, and nothing more.
To equate disability — especially severe disability — with indignity is dehumanizing. And to imply that any of these conditions is a reasonable basis upon which to commit suicide is to devalue the lives of people who live with these conditions for years, decades, and lifetimes.
This kind of devaluation is the greatest possible indignity that a disabled person can suffer, and it leads to all the many indignities with which disabled people so often must contend: isolation, exclusion, indifference, resource scarcity, financial insecurity, and vulnerability to abuse.
Such indignities have nothing to do with a state of being disabled. They have everything to do with a society that devalues human beings who are not typically able-bodied.
In such a society, we must not avail people the option of ending their lives because they have internalized a fear and hatred of disability. Instead, we must love and support people through the process of dying, a process that comes to all of us.
After all, the decision to end one’s life does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place in a society that devalues those who are fragile, dependent, and vulnerable.
If, as a society, we communicate that disability is undignified, that true worth derives from independence and “productivity,” and that we support suicide for those on the “wrong” side of the equation, how many people can bear up against that sort of thinking and make a truly independent, empowered decision at the end of life?
How many people, in the midst of the dying process, are even aware that the value system in play is arbitrary and prejudicial?
Certainly, there are provisions in the proposed bill that seek to ensure that people make decisions free of outside pressure, but realistically speaking, such safeguards provide no guarantees.
A person in a weakened physical condition, dependent upon family members for housing, medicine, transportation, and care, is unlikely to tell a doctor that the people upon whom he or she depends are exerting pressure to end it all.
This kind of pressure can become magnified when money is at stake; family members have been known to feel that it is better to safeguard an inheritance than to spend it on expensive care.
Given that family members can feel this way, imagine what pressure the insurance companies would bring to bear upon a person when suicide is an option.
When people who are non-ambulatory and dependent are considered to have lives without dignity, it is not unreasonable to assume that, in a healthcare economy of scarce resources, cost-benefit analyses will come out in favor of those considered “more deserving” — that is, those who have the potential to survive and to become “productive” once again.
Treatment will be denied people considered unworthy of it, but suicide will always be covered.
Would such decisions contribute to the dignity of anyone with a serious medical condition? Not by a long shot.
A number of Vermont disability and healthcare groups oppose physician-assisted suicide, including the Vermont Center for Independent Living, the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights, the Vermont Medical Society, the Vermont State Nurses Association, the Vermont Organization of Nurse Leaders, and the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare. National organizations such as the American Medical Association (AMA), the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, and Not Dead Yet also oppose it.
Please add your voice to the chorus of opposition to the “Death with Dignity” bill. Let your legislators know that its provisions threaten to deny each of us the dignity that we deserve at the time of our greatest need for the compassion and respect of others.
We are all fragile. We are all vulnerable. And we all deserve to live in a society that respects and safeguards the inherent worth and dignity of every life.