Many proponents of legalizing assisted suicide have accused Not Dead Yet and other disability advocates of being puppets of religious and pro-life groups who also oppose such legislation. We respect the efforts of our allies in this policy debate, but it's always been an uneasy alliance. From our point of view, this is not about sanctity of life, and we object to those who would frame this as part of the pro-life vs. pro-choice culture war. We urgently object to those on either side who would risk the lives of people already born on the rhetoric and the outcome of that war. We all deserve better than that.
We're very glad that our position is shared by many professional health care groups. But I'm pretty sure that many of our medical allies get very uncomfortable when they hear our reasons for opposing assisted suicide. Our personal experiences in the health care system are very relevant. People with disabilities live and die on the front lines of the health care system and, to be succinct, we don't trust it. Eleven national disability organizations have joined Not Dead Yet in opposing physician assisted suicide. Why? Are groups like the National Spinal Cord Injury Association puppets of the Christian right? No. Does Not Dead Yet have $21,000 a month to spend on public relations advisors like the recently renamed End-of-Life Choices group, so we were able to trick our colleagues into joining us? No. $21,000 is our annual budget this year -- if we're lucky.
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/colemanasstsui0404.htmlWhile I don't know her personally, I know several people who've worked for her directly, and any complaints they've had about the group (and there are legitimate ones, such as being too focused on physical disability) haven't been related to funding sources or puppetry.
As for spreading unnecessary fear, the fear of most people in these areas is well-grounded in fact and experience, and that's how groups like this form, not the opposite. Our fear doesn't need to be "stirred up" by groups like this, it's already present as a result of doctors, institutions, hospitals, and the like. It's always struck me as patronizing that people think that anyone disabled who's afraid of this stuff must be these poor naive souls misled by these evil groups. That we might have a lot of collective direct experience of the devaluation of our lives seems out of the question to a lot of people, not sure why.
On the other hand, if you follow the money at the Hemlock Society (now End of Life Choices, because their earlier name was a little too obvious), who claim they're only about the so-called right to die with dignity, you'll find that they've funded and provided written support of people who killed their disabled relatives and disabled people who happened to be suicidal for reasons unrelated to disability.
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