Con

“Much of the opposition to physician-assisted dying comes from disability rights activists who falsely assume that legalizing the right to die poses a danger to them and undermines the value of their lives. Some people with disabilities fear that physician-assisted dying is a slippery slope and that if we legalize it in any form, soon we’ll be killing all disabled babies at birth, people will be bumping off their aging grandparents to get out of caring for them, and everyone in a wheelchair will feel obligated to kill themselves so as not to be a burden. Some people with disabilities hear in the right-to-die movement the old message that we disabled folks would be better off dead and that our lives are not worth living.

I understand from my own life experience where these fears come from. I am an older person, and I was born with a disability (my father was offered the chance to smother me at birth as a result). I have also had many friends over the years with severe disabilities, as well as friends who have lived well with serious chronic pain and incapacitation. But in the case of right-to die legislation, I feel that these concerns are enormously exaggerated and actually quite paranoid and misinformed.”

June 19, 2015