The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws- Part of the Bioethics and Disability Series- National Council on Disability
National Council on Disability (NCD)
1331 F Street NW, Suite 850
Washington, DC 20004
The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws: Part of the Bioethics and Disability Series
National Council on Disability, October 9, 2019
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website (www.ncd.gov) or contact NCD to request an alternative format using the following information:
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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
Please check out the Report at the above Link
