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True Dignity

Citizens Against Assisted Suicide

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

Drake Isn’t Dead Yet

May 16, 2011 by Administrators

Thanks to Rhonda Wiebe, Canadian disability rights activist and friend of True Dignity Vermont, for finding and posting on Facebook the article in italics below, from Roseland, California’s online newspaper, Rocklin and RosevilleToday (www.rocklintoday.com/news/templates/disabilities.asp?articleid=9929&zoneid=64).

Drake Isn’t Dead Yet
Sunday, May 15, 2011 – Daniel J Vance

Rocklin & Roseville Today
http://www.rocklintoday.com/

When infant Stephen Drake was being born sideways breech in a New York hospital in the mid-’50s, a doctor wrongly used forceps to pull him from the womb. The resulting brain injury gave Drake hydrocephalus, which would require a lifelong brain shunt to manage. He also would have permanent challenges with nonverbal learning, tremors, body movement, and coordination.

Now Drake works for Not Dead Yet of Rochester, New York. In part, it’s a nonprofit group for people with disabilities opposed to assisted suicide laws.

In a telephone interview, 55-year-old Drake said, “Not Dead Yet was founded in 1996, shortly after the third time Dr. Jack Kevorkian was acquitted for being involved in suicides, the last time with two women with non-terminal disabilities. That same year, the Supreme Court had two cases on whether a person had a constitutional right to assisted suicide. At that time, many individual disability advocates were speaking out against assisted suicide, but it was clear a group was needed to focus on that issue alone.”

Drake cited a recent poll of people with disabilities in the United Kingdom. Although some people with disabilities there have pushed hard for having a legal right to assisted suicide, the majority of people with disabilities were against it.

In the U.S., Drake and many others with disabilities also have serious concerns. For one, people with disabilities are increasingly seen as a financial and emotional burden on society. If an assisted suicide law existed nationally, said Drake, medical professionals and family members would be in a position to consciously or unconsciously coerce vulnerable people with disabilities into making a lasting decision they normally wouldn’t consider.

“And another concern is that [assisted suicide laws] are discriminatory,” said Drake. “If, as advocates argue, giving someone assistance for suicide is honoring their suicide (choice), then assistance should be offered to anyone committing suicide, not just the ill, elderly or disabled.”

Drake said media bias was one reason Americans haven’t been better informed. For example, he said, “There has been an uptick (in the U.S.) in the number of elderly husbands killing t

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Story of a person with disabilities opposing assisted suicide

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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

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