People with disabilities speak up for MAiD; some “rights” groups would deny them choice.
In the second of a two-part blog, a renowned EOL healthcare reformer (a triple amputee) talks to Final Exit Network about the thorny nexus between Medical Aid in Dying and the profound challenges faced by disabled people.
Disability rights groups that oppose self-determination for people who seek physician-assisted dying (PAD ) argue that such people should not have the right to decide for themselves when their lives are no longer tenable. Nevertheless, the disability rights groups do make points related to PAD that are worth considering; for one, they have helped me realize that over the last ten years I have become disabled.
In Part 1, I began explaining why the disability rights group Not Dead Yet opposes Death With Dignity laws and the right to die. I also provided the most recent data from Oregon’s experience with its DWDA to refute some of the claims of Not Dead Yet.
All of the arguments made against the DWD laws by Not Dead Yet are false or misleading.
Five years ago in Massachusetts, the right to autonomy in one’s body went down to defeat in a vote related to irrational fear by some disability rights advocates working through the activist group Not Dead Yet. Their position was that they would be compelled or coerced into ending their own lives if the initiative passed.