Assisted Suicide

 

Why I’m afraid of Steven Fletcher’s assisted-suicide bill

Editor’s note. This article was first published in the Toronto Star on October 26, 2014.
By Heidi Janz

Dr. Heidi Janz

Like many Canadians with disabilities, I have been following the renewed national debate on legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia with growing fear and trepidation.
I am at the point where, to put it bluntly, I am sick and tired of hearing about how TABS (temporarily able-bodied people) and former TABS want the “right” to die, lest they have to live with some of the limitations that I do. The (not so) implicit message is: People with disabilities have crappy lives, therefore, they should want to die.

It’s true that I have some significant advantages that many disabled people don’t: I have a PhD; I live in my own home, and I direct my own care. It’s also true that I live with some limitations that many TABS would deem intolerable — namely, I’m bladder incontinent and eat via a g-tube.
But my dignity/worth as a human being is neither defined by my advantages, nor diminished by my limitations. Rather, as a human being, my life has intrinsic dignity and worth. It is when my life is devalued by society as a “fate worse than death” that I am robbed of my rightful human dignity.
Indeed, like most people born with disabilities, I have had a lifetime of encountering temporarily able-bodied people who automatically assume that the fact that I need other people to assist me with personal care means that I have neither personal dignity nor quality of life. In latter years, I have developed a swallowing disorder that has made it necessary for me to receive part of my daily nutrition via a g-tube. This further lowers my perceived quality of life in the eyes of many people.
Sadly, this includes medical practitioners, as they are not immune to the same able-ist biases which afflict the general public. Consequently, I already live with the fear that, the next time I’m admitted to ICU in severe respiratory distress, a physician could read my medical history, see my feeding-tube, conclude that I have a poor quality of life already, and therefore deem further treatment as “futile.”
The legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide would inevitably, exponentially increase my social vulnerability, along with the social vulnerability of every single disabled and elderly Canadian, thus putting our lives in real and present danger.
The issue of suffering is inevitably central to discussions around the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. No human being wants to suffer; yet, suffering is demonstrably an intrinsic part of human life from beginning to end.

The question thus becomes: At what point does suffering become legitimate grounds for ending someone’s life? Should society be obligated to honour a request to die made by a newly paralyzed 18-year-old who can’t yet conceive of the fact that it is possible for someone with a disability to have a life? Or what about a request to die made by a Canadian soldier who returns from the battlefield with disabilities? Or a request to die made by a middle-aged person with disabilities whose extensive care needs and lack of assisted-living options force them to go into a long-term care facility?
These are not merely hypothetical scenarios; rather, each of these situations is a case in which assisted suicide and euthanasia would be permissible under the Private Member’s Bill that Member of Parliament Steven Fletcher has put before the House of Commons, as the bill cites both physical and psychological suffering as legitimate grounds for assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Fletcher and those who support the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia argue that safeguards would be put in place to ensure that legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia are not misused and abused, resulting in people with disabilities being “assisted to die” without their consent. But data from jurisdictions where euthanasia and assisted suicide have already been legalized, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, clearly indicate that such supposed safeguards simply do not work.
Thus, I am one of the many Canadians with disabilities who feel strongly that our energies as a nation would be much better spent creating increased access to assisted living and palliative care.
Of Steven Fletcher, I respectfully ask: Why don’t you use your privileged position as a Member of Parliament to seek to help your fellow Canadians with disabilities live better lives, from beginning to end, rather than seeking to enact legislation that will inevitably further devalue and endanger our lives?

Heidi Janz is an adjunct professor at the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre and the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta.

Source: NRLC News