{"id":294128,"date":"2023-07-05T08:41:21","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T13:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=294128"},"modified":"2023-07-03T12:40:52","modified_gmt":"2023-07-03T17:40:52","slug":"legalized-assisted-suicide-violating-americans-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/legalized-assisted-suicide-violating-americans-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Is legalized assisted suicide violating the Americans with Disabilities Act?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

(NRL News Today<\/a>) Not many people, including me, are aware of a lawsuit against California\u2019s \u2018End of Life Options Act\u2019 that has\u00a0enormous implications for people with disabilities. In an op-ed appearing in\u00a0The Hill<\/em>\u00a0Matt Valliere lays out the case why, under EOLOA, \u201cpeople with life-threatening disabilities and\u00a0only\u00a0<\/em>people with life-threatening disabilities who say they want to die can get a state-facilitated death. Everyone else gets suicide prevention and the protections afforded by the law and professional standards. That\u2019s not choice, it\u2019s eugenics.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is squarely at odds with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). \u201cIn the health care context,\u201d he writes, \u201cif you provide a certain standard of care to people \u2014 say, suicide prevention care \u2014 you cannot provide different or lesser standard of care to others based on disability.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not news\u2014or shouldn\u2019t be\u2014to policymakers. \u201cI wrote a few years ago\u00a0in these pages<\/a>\u00a0that Congress should be mindful of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when addressing assisted suicide public policy,\u201d\u00a0Valliere explains. \u201cAssisted suicide laws violate the landmark legislation that codifies disability as a protected class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meaning \u201cEvery underlying condition qualifying a person for lethal drugs under assisted suicide laws also qualifies the same person for protection under the ADA.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you go to their\u00a0homepage<\/a>, you\u2019ll find an excellent synopsis:<\/p>\n

Individuals who are facing life-threatening conditions qualify as people with disabilities under the ADA, as those conditions themselves not only cause physical and\/or mental impairments, they are impairments that substantially limit major life functions.\u00a0\u00a0The lawsuit seeks to establish that California\u2019s assisted suicide law is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the equal protection and substantive due process clauses in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.<\/em><\/p>\n

So why are people with disabilities, nonetheless, disproportionately\u00a0at risk from assisted suicide laws?\u00a0For one thing<\/p>\n

Despite more than 30 years of the ADA being on the books, physician perceptions of the lives of people with disabilities remain abysmal. A recent\u00a0Harvard study<\/a>\u00a0reports, \u201cIn [a] survey of 714 practicing U.S. physicians nationwide, 82.4% reported that people with significant disability have worse quality of life than nondisabled people. \u2026 [T]hese\u00a0findings about physicians\u2019 perceptions of this population raise questions about ensuring equitable care to people with disability. Potentially biased views among physicians could contribute to persistent health care disparities affecting people with disability.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

There is second reason, illustrated by what happened during the pandemic:\u00a0Triage.\u00a0The treatment for people with disabilities in states that had assisted suicide laws was drastically different that those states (thankfully, for now, a large majority) that do not have such laws.\u00a0Valliere explains<\/p>\n

As we saw in the pandemic, states across the country promulgated Crisis Standards of Care, the triage rationing protocols put in place for medical professionals to know how best to mete out the limited resources.\u00a0Multiple complaints<\/a>\u00a0were filed with the HHS Office for Civil Rights due to these policies systematically deprioritizing people with disabilities for life-saving medical resources, based on a misguided utilitarian view that non-disabled lives are worth more than the lives of people with disabilities.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is an important essay that\u00a0I encourage you to read and to ponder<\/a>. Let me add one other lengthy but essential quote:<\/p>\n

In every medical appointment nowadays, doctors ask, \u201cDo you feel safe at home?\u201d and \u201cHave you considered self-harm?\u201d Whenever patients express a desire to harm or kill themselves in a medical setting, the standard of care is to initiate harm and suicide prevention care and services.<\/em><\/p>\n

In most states, if medical professionals react to those same warning signs by saying instead, \u201cSure, I can help you with that,\u201d and their patients kill themselves with their help, those caregivers would be prosecuted in criminal court, likely sued by patients\u2019 families in civil court, and lose their licenses to practice medicine.<\/em><\/p>\n

If, however, you happen to live in a jurisdiction where assisted suicide is legal, and you have a condition perceived by your doctor as limiting your life to six months or less, then both the standard of care and the usual criminal, civil, and professional protections afforded to everyone else are out the window for you. You, along with all other supposedly terminal patients, are shunted into the \u201cbetter off dead\u201d funnel, so long as doctor death is \u201cacting in good faith.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

By any standards, a chilling essay, one that should remind us of what is at stake for people with disabilities under \u201cassisted suicide\u201d:<\/p>\n

In our fight for health care equity, however, it has become abundantly clear that California\u2019s assisted suicide law disproportionately affects people with disabilities, funneling medically expensive people away from real healthcare and providing just one \u201ctreatment\u201d to which we all have equal access \u2014 death.<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: This article was published at NRL News Today<\/a>\u00a0and is reprinted here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Target<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(NRL News Today) Not many people, including me, are aware of a lawsuit against California\u2019s \u2018End of Life Options Act\u2019 that has\u00a0enormous implications for people with disabilities. 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