The debate over physician-assisted suicide has gained additional prominence in the past year thanks to the current uproar over the continuous expansion of who is eligible for euthanasia in Canada. Unlike in Canada, in the 11 American states where it is legal, it is currently restricted to the “terminally ill.” However, the definition of terminal illness being employed is elastic enough that it can encompass a wide variety of people with treatable conditions — including spinal cord injury.
Quadriplegics can become eligible for physician-assisted suicide based on a technicality that also qualifies many others who could live long, fulfilling lives — if appropriate medical care were available. That is, if you have six months to live in the absence of medical intervention, you are eligible. Therefore, diabetics and dialysis patients — who can live for decades with treatment — also qualify. The situation on its face is alarming.
Our rejoinder as a community to these statutes should be to ask their supporters why our lives are not worth living and to oppose the practice so long as disabled lives are devalued. We must challenge statutes permitting physician-assisted suicide as long as the fundaments of a fulfilling existence are placed out of reach by an ableist society. Otherwise, vulnerable and underprivileged members of our community might opt to end their lives — lives that are worth living — due to social conditions that might otherwise be remedied by just policies.
We Deserve Real Choice
Statutes that permit physician-assisted suicide needlessly imperil members of our community as long as there exist crises of homecare availability and eligibility, affordable and accessible housing, employment for people with disabilities, and access to adequate medical care and appropriate durable medical equipment. These crises can combine to make people with disabilities feel utterly hopeless. Moreover, when caregiving becomes an individual responsibility in the absence of robust social programs, it can fall on families — which can create interpersonal dynamics that compound a bleak outlook with additional feelings of guilt and shame.
The controversy among our neighbors to the north has started a conversation about how poverty — and especially the combination of disability and poverty — can drive people to seek death as an alternative to a perceived lifetime of exclusion from what makes life worth living.
We need to work with our allies on an agenda that delivers the goods, and it will take an entire era of advocacy to remedy many of these social ills.
Until then, the “choice” to take one’s own life under the supervision of a physician is a false one, which may be presented in bad faith to people in our community who feel like there are no options. You do not need to spend very long in acute rehab to meet someone who feels like their life is over, when they are, in fact, starting over.
Tell Us Your Story
To me, suicide appears as an easy way out of the transformation, conflict and growth that will be necessary to overcome ableism in our society. If assisted suicide becomes an easy option, the impetus to invest in technology that improves our quality of life and the need for insurance to cover our specialized care become moot. Again, the case of Canada here is a cautionary example. The easy way out is the cheap way out. Let’s make living the obvious choice by investing in people with disabilities.
United Spinal Association wants to hear from you about your experiences with this issue. Were you ever approached with the option for physician-assisted suicide? Have you considered the option? Let us know by sending an email to MyStory@Unitedspinal.org.
We know this is a highly sensitive subject, but the stakes are high. Advocates need to tell their stories to confront the public with the difficult reality that people with disabilities can be encouraged to opt for death instead of fighting for a life well-lived with proper support and care. We need to educate the medical community about the hard facts regarding quality of life after SCI, and the challenges newly injured individuals face — and how these hardships are in fact, addressable.
The onus is on medical and rehab professionals to rise to the challenge of treating depression after injury and working with people with disabilities to reintegrate them into society. Legislators must enact policies that facilitate and support the integration of people with disabilities into the community.
Society must accept us as equals and let us live with dignity — rather than die defeated by entirely unnatural causes.