As a 67-year-old with significant disability, I have been vocal opponent of doctor assisted suicide for decades. I cannot help but question whether the people who have been helped to end their lives, in the states where the practice is now legal, had adequate access to numerous services available to them to make life easier. Services such as peer support, personal assistant services, home modification programs, living skills enhancement, or hospice and palliative care. Did their health insurance meet their needs? Was health insurance even available to them? Did relatives, friends, and doctors give subtle or overt cues that ending their lives would be better? The National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, in 2019 released the findings of a study that found the “safeguards” in place in suicide assistance laws are “ineffective” and also “fail to protect patients.” 

Because our health care system already does not treat everyone equally, the practice of physician – assisted suicide raises the risk for those who often do not get the same access and thus treatment as others. This includes people with disabilities, veterans, people with mental illness, older people and those who cannot afford high- quality health care. How this manifests in the health care system is illustrated in the movie “Million Dollar Baby,” which feeds into the attitude that many non-disabled people who become disabled are then “better dead than disabled.” The main character became paralyzed during a boxing match. She was also poor. Disability and poverty are two major factors that have the potential of making assisted suicide seem desirable. As for mental illness, none of the physician-assisted suicide laws have strong requirements that person seeking it be evaluated by a psychiatrist. 

Pam Heavens

Joliet