Disability Activists Call Upon Euthanasia Movement To Be Honest for a Change

Stephen Drake
Amy Hasbrouck
John Kelly
(617) 512-4545 (cell)
(708) 209-1500

On August 30th, the Boston Herald gave Faye Girsh, the Executive Director of the Hemlock Society, a chance to talk about how Not Dead Yet, one of sixteen national and local disability rights groups sponsoring a rally against them this week, has "distorted the right to die agenda to make people think the movement wants to encourage the elderly and disabled to take their own lives." Without contacting the group Ms. Girsh attacked, the Herald printed her factually incorrect explanation of the "assisted dying" movement.

"You are going to hear that this movement is trying to kill people with disabilities," she said. "These are specious arguments, nothing to do with what we're about. . . . [We're about] helping people who have terminal illnesses decide which end-of-life option they prefer . . ."

What Ms. Girsh does not mention, and what few reporters seem willing to investigate, is that the Hemlock Society has long included the euthanasia of people with non-terminal disabilities in its political agenda. A few examples are mentioned below, and documented in the following pages and in press materials that will be available at the rally Saturday at 11:30 a.m.

• In the mid-1980's, Richard Scott, a Hemlock co-founder, and psychologist Faye Girsh, brought and pursued a "right to die" court case on behalf of a 26-year-old woman with cerebral palsy in California, Elizabeth Bouvia, who asked for help to starve to death after a miscarriage and marriage break-up.

• The Hemlock Society provided over $20,000 to Jack Kevorkian's legal defense fund, and supported him throughout his trial. Over two-thirds of his victims over the last decade were people with non-terminal conditions, mostly disabled women facing crushing social and economic pressures.

  The Hemlock Society has provided for the legal defense of George Delury, who murdered his wife with multiple sclerosis, and Ms. Girsh has expressed support for Robert Latimer, who murdered his 12-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy.

• Hemlock Society lawyers are drafters of the Harvard Model Statute for legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, for which people with either terminal or incurable conditions would be eligible, as under the proposed statute in New Hampshire.

• The Hemlock Society also advocates for the legalization of non-voluntary euthanasia. They want families to be able to request and obtain the euthanasia of incompetent relatives whose lives "are too burdensome to continue."

Disability activists are tired of the false rhetoric of compassion that rolls off the tongues of the socially elite Hemlock members. The sweeping changes in public policy that they seek affect everyone. Medical killing is the most cost-effective way to "treat" expensive health conditions. But what does it matter to them if HMO doctors are paid financial incentives to deny needed medical treatment? You won't see them picketing for universal health care or expanded home and community-based services. Characterized by one of their own members as "societal elites" (see Fox, excerpts), they can afford to buy the best acute care and long term care insurance. All they have to do is convince the press to ignore their history and ignore the facts. The fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. is medical mistake, yet it's easier to deal with a Firestone tire defect in our legal system than to remedy medical malpractice.

Countless people with non-terminal disabilities have already lost their lives because of the worldwide euthanasia movement. Their ideas about who is expendable are not new, but for the first time, our minority group is organizing to fight back. We don't have an expensive PR firm to deliver our message, but we will be there Saturday at 11:30 to demand that they "Stop the Lies."