The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws Part of the Bioethics and Disability Series National Council on Disability

The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws- Part of the Bioethics and Disability Series- National Council on Disability
National Council on Disability (NCD)
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Washington, DC 20004
The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws: Part of the Bioethics and Disability Series
National Council on Disability, October 9, 2019
 This report is also available in alternative formats. Please visit the National Council on Disability (NCD) website (www.ncd.gov) or contact NCD to request an alternative format using the following information: ncd@ncd.gov Email
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The views contained in this report do not necessarily represent those of the Administration, as this and all NCD documents are not subject to the A-19 Executive Branch review process.

National Council on Disability An independent federal agency making recommendations to the President and Congress to enhance the quality of life for all Americans with disabilities and their families. Letter of Transmittal October 9, 2019 The President The White House Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: On behalf of the National Council on Disability (NCD), I am pleased to submit Assisted Suicide Laws and Their Danger to People with Disabilities, part of a five-report series on the intersection of disability and bioethics. This report, and the others in the series, focuses on how the historical and continued devaluation of the lives of people with disabilities by the medical community, legislators, researchers, and even health economists, perpetuates unequal access to medical care, including life-saving care. NCD has long opposed assisted suicide laws. In 1997, after a thorough review of the forms of discrimination people with disabilities experienced in American society, NCD issued Assisted Suicide: A Disability Perspective, opposing legalization of assisted suicide, concluding that the evidence indicated that the interests of the few people who would benefit from assisted suicide were “heavily outweighed by the probability that any law, procedures, and standards that can be imposed to regulate physician-assisted suicide will be misapplied to unnecessarily end the lives of people with disabilities.” Instead, NCD called for a comprehensive, fully-funded, system of assistive living services for people with disabilities. Eight years later, in 2005, reaffirmed its position opposing the legalization of assisted suicide. The nation had observed the implementation of the Oregon assisted suicide law, and the evolution of cultural attitudes toward so-called “mercy killing,” of both the medical and non-medical variety. Jack Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder for committing active euthanasia of a man with ALS, utilitarian euthanasia advocate Professor Peter Singer was hired for a prestigious bioethics chair at Princeton University, two movies favorably depicting euthanasia of people with quadriplegia won Oscars, and numerous courts upheld the right of a guardian to starve and dehydrate a severely brain injured but healthy woman in Florida. The dangers to people with disabilities based on the devaluation of their lives was ever clearer. Assisted Suicide Laws and their Danger to People with Disabilities reexamines the issue of assisted suicide in light of NCD’s prior reports, brings NCD’s earlier analysis up-to-date, and finds that the dangers and harms that NCD identified in 1997 and 2005 are at least as significant today. The report describes, among other things, a double standard in suicide prevention efforts where people with disabilities are not referred for mental health treatment when seeking assisted suicide, while people without disabilities receive such referrals. The report recommends steps that must be taken at the federal and state levels to ensure that people with disabilities have a system of assisted services and supports; that medical providers inform patients seeking assisted suicide of these supports; and that medical providers receive training in disability competency and disability-risk factors for suicide. NCD stands ready to assist the Administration, Congress and federal agencies to ensure that people with disabilities are not steered toward ending their lives due to a lack of supports and medical providers who are not required to help patients find alternatives.
Respectfully, Neil Romano
 Chairman

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