• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Videos
  • Signup for Emails
  • What You Can Do
  • About True Dignity
    • About the Board
    • Contact Us
  • Links
  • Report Abuse

True Dignity

Citizens Against Assisted Suicide

Ad example

Suicide is never death with dignity, and assisted suicide legislation threatens true patient choices at the end of life.

What about the Right to Cry for Help?

July 10, 2012 by Administrators

Thanks to Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition for calling our attention to this excellent article by a lawyer and disability rights activist. It appeared in the July 9 2012 issue of the Montreal Gazette (http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/about+right+help/6907100/story.html:

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

By Amy E. Hasbrouck – Montreal Gazette, July 9, 2012.

It has taken me a long time to read through the nearly 400 pages of the June 15 decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court on the issue of assisted suicide. I found reading it to be like a journey to a dark place, full of raw emotions.

The long and the short of the reasons for judgment issued by Justice Lynn Smith is that legal provisions in Canada prohibiting assisted suicide law are unconstitutional because they impede disabled people’s rights to life, liberty and security of the person.

The judge believes that having a disability or degenerative illness is a rational reason to want to die, and that those of us with disabilities should be helped to die if we can’t do it neatly or efficiently ourselves.

Justice Smith doesn’t appear to believe that people with disabilities and terminal illness are ever coerced, persuaded, bullied, tricked or otherwise induced to end our lives prematurely. She believes those researchers who contend there have been no problems in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal, and she rejects evidence suggesting there have been problems.

She writes: “It is unethical to refuse to relieve the suffering of a patient who requests and requires such relief, simply in order to protect other hypothetical patients from hypothetical harm.”

I’ll have to mention that to some of my hypothetical friends who say they have been pressured by doctors, nurses and social workers to hypothetically “pull the plug.”

The same goes for all those folks who succumbed to the pressure; I guess they’re only hypothetically dead.

Reading the B.C. court decision is hard as a person with a disability because it’s unpleasant to discover underlying assumptions about people with disabilities.

It’s one thing when a random guy walks up to you on the street and says, “I’d rather be dead than be like you.”

It’s quite another, though, when a Canadian judge says of individuals who may experience such suffering (physical or existential), unrelievable by palliative care, “that it is in their best interests to assist them in hastened death.” Same message, only the judge uses bigger words.

So what of the “suffering” she describes?

Well, a lot of physical pain can be managed by effective palliative care; and sedation is available for the most severe pain. “Existential suffering” is when someone has not come to terms with a disability or terminal diagnosis; that takes counselling, peer support and a desire to get on with one’s life. Of course, coming to terms would be a lot easier if people weren’t telling us we’d be better off dead.

The B.C. Supreme Court has chosen not to listen very closely to disability-rights advocates with more than 20 years of experience battling discrimination; instead, the court relied on the stories of people who have accepted the view that disability is undignified, and that people with disabilities should be given a streamlined path to death whenever they want it and however they want it.

Justice Smith assumes that, because it’s no longer illegal, suicide is somehow an affirmative right; and if you can’t do it the way you want to do it, then you should have the right to have someone do it for you.

But she forgot about the “right to fail;” that more than 90 per cent of suicide attempts are unsuccessful. What about the right to “cry for help?”

The judge also seems to have forgotten about the billions of dollars spent each year on suicide-prevention programs and mental-health care.

Nor does she mention that a non-disabled person who says he wants to kill himself can be committed to a psychiatric hospital against his will.

To put it simply, if a non-disabled person wants to commit suicide, she’s considered irrational and mentally ill, and is treated for depression, or maybe even locked up to prevent her from hurting herself.

But if a disabled person wants to kill herself, she’s told she’s making a reasonable choice, and not only has the right to do so, but is even helped to complete the act so her death is guaranteed where most other suicide attempts fail.

That sounds like discrimination to me.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the decision is the judge’s finding that outlawing assisted suicide somehow deprives people of the right to life. Sure, she has a logical argument to make her point, but using basic common sense, it doesn’t pass the sniff test.

It’s hard enough for those of us with disabilities to deal with architectural and communication barriers, discrimination, inadequate support services and public policies that limit our integration and equality, let alone contending with people who grease the skids to the River Styx.

Amy E. Hasbrouckis chair of Not Dead Yet, an international organization of people with disabilities who oppose the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. She lives in Valleyfield Quebec.
Posted by Alex Schadenberg at 10:22 AM

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Stay Active!

  • Get Action Alerts Emails
  • Make Calls
  • Write Letters

Vermont Government

  • Governor Phil Scott
  • Lt. Governor David Zuckerman
  • State Reps By District
  • State Senators By District
  • VT Legislative Directory

Stay Informed!

  • Join our email list

More to See

(no title)

January 16, 2011 By Administrators

PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS OR OTHER EXTERNAL SIGNS OF DISTRESS ARE SOMETIMES EXHIBITED”

February 28, 2022 By Administrators

ACTION ALERT

January 11, 2022 By carolyn

Tags

abuse Act 39 Another Defeat for Assisted Suicide coercion Letters to the Editor: Pauline Austin Opponents of Assisted Suicide Greatly Outnumber Proponents at Manchester Forum. S.74 safeguards Story of a person with disabilities opposing assisted suicide telehealth

Article Categories

  • Ablism (2)
  • Acceptance of Unintended Consequences (5)
  • Action Alert (3)
  • Administrative (4)
  • Agism (4)
  • Alerts (24)
  • Animal euthanasia argument (4)
  • Board (1)
  • Brittany Maynard (1)
  • California (4)
  • Canada (3)
  • Canada Supreme Court (1)
  • Cheapness of Assisted Suicide (5)
  • Choice Becomes "Duty" to Die (14)
  • Chronic Diseases Rendered Terminal by Non-treatment (3)
  • Classism and Assisted Suicide (4)
  • Colorado (2)
  • Commentary (27)
  • Compassion and Choices (7)
  • Conflict of Interest (4)
  • Connecticut (6)
  • Conscience Rights (2)
  • Cost Cutting Agenda of Barbara Coombs Lee (2)
  • Countering the PAS lobby (1)
  • Court rulings (1)
  • CT (1)
  • Damage to Family (3)
  • Damage to Helpers (1)
  • Death with Dignity (3)
  • Defeats in other states (10)
  • Depression (8)
  • Devaluation of Lives with Disabilities (32)
  • Disability Rights Groups' Opposition (30)
  • Doctor's Power (3)
  • Dying with Real Dignity (1)
  • Editorials (5)
  • Elder Abuse (25)
  • Election 2014 (3)
  • Error Possibility (2)
  • Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Contagion (2)
  • Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Two Sides of the Same Coin (8)
  • Exemption options (4)
  • Expansion of Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia (16)
  • Georgia (3)
  • Germany (1)
  • Healthy people helped to commit suicide (2)
  • Language manipulation (3)
  • Legal Opinions (7)
  • Legislative Efforts in Other Countries (3)
  • Legislative Efforts in Other States (10)
  • Legislative Testimony (1)
  • Letters to the Editors of Newspapers (13)
  • Letters to the Legislature (2)
  • Maine (1)
  • Maryland (1)
  • Massachusetts (3)
  • Medical Opinions (18)
  • Medical Power (5)
  • Medical Societies (6)
  • Montana (2)
  • Moratorium (2)
  • Murder Invitation (3)
  • Nevada (1)
  • Never Investigated (1)
  • New Jersey (5)
  • New Mexico (1)
  • New York (4)
  • New York (1)
  • Not a Peaceful Death (5)
  • Oregon (4)
  • Other Countries (3)
  • Other States (11)
  • Out of State/General (10)
  • Palliative Care (7)
  • Personal Stories (6)
  • Pharmacists (6)
  • Polls (4)
  • Pro Assisted Suicide (1)
  • Prognosis Inaccuracy (3)
  • Racism and Assisted Suicide (1)
  • Randy Brock (1)
  • Rationing (3)
  • Reasons to Oppose (3)
  • Rejections of Assisted Suicide in Other Countries (3)
  • Rejections of Assisted Suicide in other states (5)
  • Relatives Won't Know (4)
  • Religious "movement" (1)
  • Repeal Effort (4)
  • Richard Doerflinger (1)
  • Selfishness of Proponents (3)
  • Selling of Suicide (7)
  • Silencing Opposition (2)
  • Slippery Slope (23)
  • Suicide Contagion (23)
  • Suicide Increase (10)
  • Suicide Tourism (3)
  • Talking Points (2)
  • Testimony before non-VT legislative bodies (3)
  • Transparency Lack (1)
  • True Dignity (22)
  • Uncategorized (375)
  • Unused Drug Dangers (1)
  • Unworkability if Regulations Attempt to Make AS "Safe" (1)
  • Updates (1)
  • US (1)
  • Vermont (18)
  • Vermont Alliance for Ethical Health Care (5)
  • Vermont Governor (4)
  • Vermont Legislature (61)
  • Videos (24)
  • Vote Count on Passage (4)
  • Vote Results (5)

Footer

Tags

abuse Act 39 Another Defeat for Assisted Suicide coercion Letters to the Editor: Pauline Austin Opponents of Assisted Suicide Greatly Outnumber Proponents at Manchester Forum. S.74 safeguards Story of a person with disabilities opposing assisted suicide telehealth

Recent

  • (no title)
  • PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS OR OTHER EXTERNAL SIGNS OF DISTRESS ARE SOMETIMES EXHIBITED”
  • ACTION ALERT
  • S.74: A step down the slippery slope
  • Vermont’s Second Assisted Suicide Report Does Not Reassure

Search

Copyright © 2025 · True Dignity · Log in