Assisted Suicide: Valuing Disabled Life
Disabled people need pain-control treatment, love, encouragement, hope, acceptance, and equality
By Mary Frances Platt

Sitting in my den watching the New England snowfall or feeling the sun on my face, I feel a contentment and love for my own life that just five years ago I did not believe would ever come my way again. My home has been adapted for my access needs, I have successfully learned to train my own assistance animal, and wading through red tape for wheelchairs and other assistive technology has become second nature. I have learned that my value as a human being does not have to be tied to my ability to work 40 or more hours a week.

I have been a wheelchair user for about l2 years, and five years ago I experienced a pulmonary embolism that greatly altered my life. A pulmonary embolism is a blood clot in the lung. Often referred to as "throwing a clot," it is a violent action that puts holes in the lungs, among other things. If it had occurred a tad more to the left, it would have hit my heart and killed me. I used oxygen 24 hours a day, needed almost 24-hour assistance, and could not accomplish the smallest of physical tasks. I struggled every day for breath, services, equipment, and decent health care. For the first time in my life, I became severely depressed. I wanted to die ... desperately, mostly because I was in lots of pain, did not have a comfortable wheelchair, could not eat without becoming ill, and was experiencing the frustrations that come with sudden severe illness.

I attempted to get treatment for my conditions, and sought out counseling for my depression. I was routinely unable to receive mental health care due to my combination of health problems, or due to step steeped architecture, or due to my breathing disability (I require an unscented environment). My doctor, whom I have since fired, told me I was fat and going to die anyway. In fact, at least one of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's victims was a lot like me. If it were not for a few friends and the wisdom of one healer, I would be dead. As a matter of fact, some of my records still classify me as being terminally ill. Does that diagnosis or a lesser one of chronic illness make my life disposable?

For most Americans, the thought of living with a disability is as terrifying as a horror movie. Disabled people are seen as pitiful and less than others ... much less than others. Most individuals cannot fathom a life worth living in a wheelchair, or minus one leg, or without hearing or sight. It is, for the majority of people, a fate worse than death. This concept, better dead than disabled, provides the ethical and ideological basis for the pro-euthanasia and pro-physician-assisted suicide movement, a movement based on fear of dependency.

I am constantly battling bureaucracies for pain relief, medications, assistance and proper diagnosis of my medical conditions and needs. Most of the disabled people I know who live in pain do not have proper pain treatment. I am one of the privileged ones. I live in Massachusetts, which provides one of the best consumer-directed, home-based assistance programs under Medicaid in the country. Patients may receive up to 24 hours of in-home assistance a day if needed. This means that I do not have to live in a nursing home or other institution. I have a relatively decent health-care plan, which I often have to fight with, but I usually win on appeal. I live in truly lovely subsidized housing, and 98% of the buses in my area are lift-equipped. I now have a primary doctor who listens to me and is interested in assisting me to live my life in the ways I choose. And still, with all this, I find myself cycling in and out of depression because of the amount of fighting I have to do to just live my life on my own terms.

When non-disabled people view disabled people's struggles, they are struck by the obstacles we continuously have to tear down. Tearing down can lead to wearing down, and when we are worn down, we become vulnerable to assisted suicide. The thoughts race through our exhausted minds ... "Well, maybe I should just give up," "This is too hard," "I can't live in this kind of pain," "I don't want to be locked up in a nursing home," etc.

For those with adult-onset disability the initial shock of disablement can be overwhelming, especially if one becomes institutionalized and sees no way of getting out.

When a person becomes disabled, he or she needs support, education, treatment, encouragement and hope to move with the changes presented. I often receive my best support from my "sisters" (and brothers) in the disability-rights movement. Even without that encouragement, most of us manage to get through the grief, loss, fear and anger and get on with our disabled lives.

Disabled people need life care, not death care. We need the freedom to move through the world as non-disabled people do. We need the right to live in our own homes with assistance, we need aggressive pain-control treatment, and we need love, encouragement, acceptance and equality. What we do not need is genocide, and the ultimate goal of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia is exactly that: the removal of disabled lives. Simply put, it is murder.

Reprinted with permission from Feminists for Life's newsletter, "The American Feminist," Winter 1999-2000.

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