I'm not sure how I feel. What do you think? Assisted Suicide.

[quaint]

45. I support assisted suicide but I share concerns of those with disabilities.

Disability Groups Opposed to Assisted Suicide Laws

ADAPT – American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today
ADAPT National
American Association of People with Disabilities
Assn of Programs for Rural Independent Living
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network
Center for Public Representation
Disability Rights Center & Road to Freedom Bus Tour
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
National Council on Disability
National Council on Independent Living
National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities
National Spinal Cord Injury Association
Not Dead Yet
TASH
The Arc of the United States
United Spinal Association
World Institute on Disability

As a person with a disability and a wheelchair-user, I’m proud that the disability community has overwhelmingly opposed the legalization of assisted suicide. It’s a deadly mix with our broken, profit-driven health care system, where financial pressures already play far too great a role. Direct coercion is not even necessary. If insurers deny, or even merely delay, approval of expensive, life-giving treatments, patients will, in effect, be steered toward assisted suicide, if it is legal.

Contrary to the claims of its supporters, it would radically decrease, not increase, individual self-determination, due to the significant risk of abuse. It poses substantial danger to people with disabilities and many other people in vulnerable circumstances. For example, people with depression are given lethal drugs in Oregon, despite the claims of proponents that this condition disqualifies a person. Elder abuse is a growing but still largely unreported reality that threatens to pressure seniors toward an early death. Moreover, the supposed safeguards in the Oregon and Washington State laws don’t really protect patients. If one’s doctor refuses lethal drugs, the patient or family can—and do—simply shop for another doctor. And nothing in the law can protect patients when family pressures, financial or emotional, distort patient choice.

--Marilyn Golden, Senior Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund