Diane Coleman
Assisted suicide advocacy organizations paint themselves as “compassionate progressives” fighting for freedom against the “religious right.” That simplistic script ignores inconvenient truths that are all too familiar to disability advocates, such as:
• Predictions that someone will die in six months are often wrong;
• People who want to die usually have treatable depression and/or need better palliative care;
• Pressures to cut health-care costs in the current political climate make this the wrong time to add doctor-prescribed suicide to “treatment” options; and
• Abuse of elders and people with disabilities is a growing but often undetected problem, making coercion virtually impossible to identify or prevent.
It’s not the proponents’ good intentions but the language and implementation of assisted-suicide laws that lawmakers need to consider.