Rights Group: Assisted Suicide is discriminatory, a violation of Americans with Disabilities Act

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]egalized assisted suicide sets up a double standard: some people get suicide prevention while others get suicide assistance, and the difference between the two groups is the health status of the individual. This is blatant discrimination and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Disability is at the heart of the assisted suicide debate. Some people fear disability as a fate worse than death. Proponents of legalized assisted suicide are willing to treat lives ended through assisted suicide coercion and abuse as “acceptable losses” when balanced against their unwillingness to accept disability or responsibility for their own suicide.

Although intractable pain has been emphasized as the primary reason for enacting assisted suicide laws, the top five reasons Oregon doctors actually report for issuing lethal prescriptions are the “loss of autonomy” (89.9%), “less able to engage in activities” (87.4%), “loss of dignity” (83.8%), “loss of control of bodily functions” (58.7%) and “feelings of being a burden” (38.3%).(Death With Dignity Act Annual Reports, PDF download) These are disability issues.

In a society that prizes physical ability and stigmatizes impairments, it’s no surprise that previously able-bodied people may tend to equate disability with loss of dignity. This reflects the prevalent but insulting societal judgment that people who deal with incontinence and other losses in bodily function are lacking dignity. People with disabilities are concerned that these psycho-social disability-related factors have become widely accepted as sufficient justification for assisted suicide.

Anyone could ask for assisted suicide, but physicians decide who gets it. Physicians must predict, however unreliably, whether a person will die within six months. Physicians judge whether or not a particular request for assisted suicide is rational or results from impaired judgment.

In judging that an assisted suicide request is rational, essentially, doctors are concluding that a person’s physical disabilities and dependence on others for everyday needs are sufficient grounds to treat them completely differently than they would treat a physically able-bodied suicidal person. There’s an established body of research demonstrating that physicians underrate the quality of life of people with disabilities compared with our own assessments (Gerhart, K. A., Kozoil-McLain, J., Lowenstein, S.R., & Whiteneck, G.G. (1994). Quality of life following spinal cord injury: knowledge and attitudes of emergency care providers. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 23, 807-812; Cushman, L.A & Dijkers, M.P. (1990). Depressed mood in spinal cord injured patients: staff perceptions and patient realities, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 1990, vol. 71, 191-196). Nevertheless, the physician’s ability to render these judgments accurately remains unquestioned. Steps that could address the person’s concerns, such as home care services to relieve feelings of burdening family, need not be explored. In this flawed world view, suicide prevention is irrelevant.

The prevalence of elder abuse has been one factor that raises concerns about the risk that older people with health impairments may be coerced into choosing assisted suicide. Disability abuse is similarly prevalent but less well known.

Assisted suicide’s so-called “safeguards” apply when the lethal prescription is requested, but not when it is administered. Colorado’s proposed law contains no requirement that the patient be capable or give consent when the lethal dose is administered. Someone other than the patient is allowed to provide the lethal dose.

Colorado’s proposed law grants civil and criminal immunity to physicians providing lethal prescriptions based on a stated claim of “good faith” belief that the person was terminal and acting voluntarily. This is the lowest culpability standard possible, even below that of “negligence,” which is the minimum standard theoretically governing other physician duties. The Oregon Reports also consistently admit that the state has no way to assess the extent of non-reporting or the extent of non-compliance with the law’s criteria.

[Photo of 2011 Shamrock Run in Portland, Oregon by PhotoAtelier.]