Washington D.C., Jan 27, 2021 / 04:17 pm (CNA).- A disability rights organization praised United Nations human rights experts for condemning voluntary euthanasia on the basis of disability.
On Monday, three UN human rights experts issued a joint statement condemning the “growing trend” of countries that extend legal assisted suicide to people who have disabilities, but who do not have a terminal condition.
They added that a disability “should never be a ground or justification to end someone’s life directly or indirectly, and that a government “[u]nder no circumstance” should help “a person with a disabling condition who is not dying to terminate their life.”
In response, Diane Coleman, president of the disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, praised the decision of UN officials.
“Every major U.S. national disability group that has taken a position on assisted suicide laws opposes them for the very compelling reasons expressed by the United Nations Office of Human Rights,” Coleman told CNA on Wednesday.
Throughout parts of western Europe, it is legal for a disabled person who is not terminally ill to request and receive euthanasia. Canada is currently considering Bill C-7, which would permit those who do not have a “reasonably foreseeable” death to receive euthanasia.
Coleman praised the UN officials for defending the dignity of persons with disabilities.
“As the statement says, ‘Disability should never be a ground or justification to end someone’s life directly or indirectly,’ and we strongly agree,” she told CNA.
Coleman noted that the statement did not mention that the terminally ill who seek to end their lives “primarily request assisted suicide because of disability-related concerns” such as the loss of autonomy.
“People with advanced terminal conditions are a subset of all people with disabilities,” said Coleman. “So I really think that the concerns raised by the U.N. Office of Human Rights apply across the board.”
The three UN experts who issued the joint statement are Gerard Quinn, Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities; Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; and Claudia Mahler, Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons.
The UN’s human rights office said that bills extending euthanasia to persons with disabilities “would institutionalize and legally authorize ableism.”
Quinn, De Schutter, and Mahler warned that normalizing euthanasia for persons with disabilities who are not terminally ill would draw upon “ableist assumptions about the inherent ‘quality of life’ or ‘worth’ of the life of a person with a disability.”
“These assumptions, which are grounded in ableism and associated stereotypes, have been decisively rejected by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” they said. “Disability is not a burden or a deficit of the person. It is a universal aspect of the human condition.”
Canada’s Bill C-7 was introduced in the country’s Parliament following the Quebec Superior Court’s 2019 ruling that the requirement of a “reasonably foreseeable death” to receive euthanasia was a violation of rights under the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The two plaintiffs in the case, Jean Truchon and Nicole Gladu, were both diagnosed with disabling conditions that are not terminal. Truchon received euthanasia in April, 2020.
All countries with legal active euthanasia—where a doctor can legally end a patient’s life at their request—have ratified the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or its optional protocol.
The three experts also said that the elderly or disabled “may feel subtly pressured to end their lives prematurely” on account of “attitudinal barriers as well as the lack of appropriate services and support.”
Poverty, too, plays a role, as “the proportion of people with disabilities living in poverty is significantly higher” than those without disabilities, they said.
“People with disabilities condemned to live in poverty due to the lack of adequate social protection can decide to end their lives as a gesture of despair,” they said. “Set against the legacy of accumulated disadvantages their ‘architecture of choice’ could hardly be said to be unproblematic.”
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The contrivance is more the efforts of Chief Justice Roberts seeking to enhance his legacy as a moderate jurist assuming the swing vote role of former justice Anthony Kennedy. Rather than seek justice. The USCCB in similar vein is more the religious arm of the socialist egalitarian Democrat Party than defenders of truth and justice – Straws floating on the high seas outweigh astronomical abortion rates. How can a nation remain solvent if illegal entry is rewarded with all the rights and favors of citizenship? Democrats want their vote the USCCB want their empty pews filled and Chief Justice Roberts wants the kudos of Laurence Tribe.
““We affirm last week’s decision by the Supreme Court that the inclusion of a citizenship question must ensure genuine reasons for such inclusion,”
How about “To know how many citizens we have?”
“We reaffirm that all persons in the United States should be counted in the Census regardless of their immigration status”
Which they would be; they need only mark the box that says they’re not citizens.
How is that that it’s okay for the census bureau to ask on the long form all sorts of intrusive questions, but it isn’t okay to ask the simple question about whether the respondent is a citizen?
I would be grateful if the US bishops would spend rather more time on catechesis and on disciplining their priests (and themselves), and rather less on acting as the Democrats’ mouthpiece.
Great reply,Leslie.We need more of it, sorry I can’t as I am an Aussie.
I guess I should go look at historic census records to verify this, but was citizenship a standard question in the past? I remember seeing boxes to check off for one’s place of birth & parents’ place of birth but I’m not sure about US citizen status.
But it does sound like a reasonable thing to ask.
I read that it was there unti 1950, I think.
PS: Sure enough, I looked at a generic federal census record circa 1900 & there are citizenship questions re. year of immigration, naturalization, etc. Ditto for 1930.
A Louisiana state census c. 1860 did not have those questions but did ask place of birth.