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Archive for the ‘Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities’ Category

Some Legislators Taking a “Hear-no-evil” Stance on Act 39

Posted in Brittany Maynard, Classism and Assisted Suicide, Compassion and Choices, Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Contagion, Selling of Suicide, Suicide Contagion on April 18, 2015 | Comments Off

     Boldly displayed on a dry-erase board in Room 46 at the Vermont Statehouse, the meeting room for the House Human Services Committee, is a short list of principles the Committee has established to guide them as they consider legislation that affects Vermonters. The very first goal listed is: “Ensuring that vulnerable (Vermonters) are safe […]

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Great Op-Ed in The Valley Reporter (VT): The Systemic Injustice of Assisted Suicide

Posted in Classism and Assisted Suicide, Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Contagion on April 16, 2015 | Comments Off

This is a great piece published in today’s edition of Valley Reporter, written by a brilliant young woman of Brittany Maynard’s generation, a graduate student in disability studies at the University of New Hampshire and a person with a disability.  Here is her picture. True Dignity believes the article is important for its analysis of […]

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Testimony Began Today in Vermont House Human Services Committee: Is Act 39 Working?

Posted in Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Disability Rights Groups' Opposition, Elder Abuse, Legislative Testimony, Uncategorized, Vermont Legislature on April 15, 2015 | Comments Off

      The following is the written testimony submitted to the House Human Services Committee, and given in person by Lynne Cleveland Vitzthum of the Vermont Center for Independent Living.  Kudos to Vitzthum for staying on message through repeated attempts by Committee Chair Anne Pugh to insist that disabled people are not vulnerable under this law. […]

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Opposition to Assisted Suicide Is An Urgent Issue of Justice and Civil Rights

Posted in Ablism, Acceptance of Unintended Consequences, Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Disability Rights Groups' Opposition on March 30, 2015 | Comments Off

Here is a link to disability rights activist Stephen Mendelsohn’s wonderful testimony at the March 18, 2015 public hearing on the assisted suicide bill currently under consideration in the Connecticut General Assembly (HB 7015). Stephen is a leader of Second Thoughts Connecticut, a group of people with disabilities fighting the legalization of assisted suicide because […]

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Vermont’s New Eugenics Movement

Posted in Choice Becomes "Duty" to Die, Classism and Assisted Suicide, Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Selfishness of Proponents, Slippery Slope, Vermont on March 14, 2015 | Comments Off

Many Vermonters would be stunned to learn that some eighty years ago, our legislature passed a law enabling the sterilization of Vermonters who had been determined to be “undesirables,” people from targeted groups that included Abenakis and French Canadian immigrants. The 1931 sterilization law was designed to reduce the number of people seen as placing […]

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The Horrifying Medical Culture into Which the Vermont Legislature Has Injected Assisted Suicide

Posted in Agism, Conflict of Interest, Damage to Family, Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Doctor's Power on March 12, 2015 | Comments Off

Over its years of fighting assisted suicide, True Dignity has become acutely aware that medical care of people with disabilities is fraught with discrimination: there is a dangerous assumption, on the part of able- bodied people with power, that certain types of life are not worth living and should be brought to a quick end.  […]

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Accepting Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Dangerously Creates a “Special Class” of Homicide, Almost Never Investigated

Posted in Ablism, Agism, Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities, Elder Abuse, Never Investigated on March 8, 2015 | Comments Off

Much has been written about how legal assisted suicide and euthanasia (two sides of the same coin under our current US laws) dangerously affect the doctor-patient relationship.  The article below, written for True Dignity by disability rights activist W. Carol Cleigh, explores the way legal assisted suicide dangerously affects law enforcement. Read this account of […]

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