Thread by @anarchautist

On Thursday, me and other disabled activists met w/ @SenatorJordon about our concerns with euthanasia (VAD) in Australia. Queensland's law takes effect 1 January, and the likely passage of the Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022 means ACT & NT will be able to pass similar laws.

If you're a progressive or somewhere on the left and you're wondering why disabled people are less than enthusiastic about euthanasia "victories," I urge you to read the thread rather than dismiss disabled people's experiences out of hand.

The reality is many of us fear the unintended & deadly consequences for disabled people, which we are seeing play out across the world in every jurisdiction that has legalised euthanasia.

Euthanasia is inextricably linked with the sterilisation and genocide of disabled people.

In states w/ a history of legal euthanasia, like Canada & the US, euthanasia is overwhelmingly opposed by disabled people regardless of political affiliation.

In the US, 100% of disabled-run disability organisations w/ a position on euthanasia oppose it.

notdeadyet.org/disability-gro…

While in Canada, over 300 disability organisations across the country objected to the expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

(More on Canada later)

cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

We know doctors will euthanise disabled people without consent and will proudly admit to it. In 2013, of patients who died that year in Flanders, Belgian doctors reported hastening the deaths of 1.7% of them (1,048) without a request for euthanasia.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

Similarly, studies from August to December of 1990 showed doctors performed euthanasia without request on .8 to 1.6% of all 7000 patients who died in the Netherlands in that time, before it was legal.

thelancet.com/journals/lance…

Legalisation of euthanasia is not necessary for doctors to deny treatment to disabled people. In 2014, in the UK, the High Court granted a petition by Nancy Fitzmaurice’s mother to allow the hospital to withhold fluids, killing her by dehydration.

autisticadvocacy.org/2014/10/asan-s…

It was the first time the British legal system allowed a child breathing on her own, not on life support and not diagnosed with any terminal illness, to be killed by the medical system.

In the United States, the “futility laws” allow hospitals in California, Texas, and Virginia to refuse treatment, nutrition, and hydration to a patient if they decide that care for a patient is “futile.”

khn.org/news/texas-law…

Many disabled people deemed “futile” have been documented recovering if lucky enough to be moved to other hospitals. Disabled people are also denied organs in most US states and can have Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders placed on them without consent.

disabilityrightswa.org/wp-content/upl…

In October 2021, Grace Schara, a 19-year-old w/ Down Syndrome, was admitted to a hospital with covid-19. During the hour the hospital sent her sister home to shower, she was strapped down, coded as DNR over her & her family’s objections...

...And Grace was given three contraindicated medications that resulted in her death. Nurses refused the family’s pleas to help Grace and instead utilised an armed guard to keep them from helping Grace themselves.

wsau.com/2022/04/07/wis…

Euthanasia safeguards are not enforced. In 2016, an elderly Dutch woman with dementia verbally refused euthanasia 3x, so Dr. Marinou Arends had drugged her with a sedative. When she still sat up & tried to resist being euthanised, Dr. Arends had her son-in-law hold her down.

Dr Arends was prosecuted and convicted for murder, and 220 Dutch doctors signed a letter saying they would not euthanise a patient without their express agreement, even though Dutch law doesn’t require it. (source in Dutch)

nos.nl/artikel/215739…

Arends was cleared of all wrongdoing by the Dutch Supreme Court in 2020, which held that the woman’s refusal *was itself* evidence of her lack of capacity to decide for herself if she wanted to die, because of course any sane person would rather be dead than disabled or elderly.

Most English language news sources, such as this one, are supportive of this eugenic view, even presenting the same facts (drugging her, holding her down) as neutral or positive elements of the euthanasia process.

irishtimes.com/news/world/eur…

This view has become so pervasive that as of 2016, 1 out of 30 people in the Netherlands now die by euthanasia.

web.archive.org/web/2021030712…

Kate Cheney was one of the first people to die under Oregon’s Death w/ Dignity law in 1999. After her doctor refused euthanasia, her daughter Erika took her to 3 more doctors: the 4th noted that Erika was “coercive” & that “her choices may be influenced by her family’s wishes”...

...but approved euthanasia anyway. Erika then left her at a nursing home for a week until she requested euthanasia, which was performed on the spot.

The Michigan Law review notes many other legal inconsistencies, lack of data, & other cases of coercion.

web.archive.org/web/2014012308…

In 2008, a woman named Tami Sawyer moved in with a disabled man named Thomas Middleton; within a month she was named his heir and he was euthanised under Dying with Dignity. Two days later she sold his estate and pocketed the money.

ctmirror.org/2015/03/06/op-…

We only know about this because she was convicted of real estate fraud; there are no mechanisms to protect disabled people, nor was the state interested in investigating Middleton’s death.

Our lives have less value than the tax paid on property.

Linda Fleming, the first person to be euthanised in Washington state, was divorced, bankrupt, and unable to work due to disability, yet her situation presented no “red flags” to the proponents of euthanasia who pushed for her to be euthanised.

web.archive.org/web/2015070107…

Under the Death w/ Dignity Law, patients must be diagnosed w/ a terminal illness that will lead to death within 6 months to be eligible: oregon.gov/oha/ph/provide…

Yet people have been euthanised up to 1503 days (>4 years) after their euthanasia request: oregon.gov/oha/PH/PROVIDE…

Both Oregon and Washington’s laws allow witnesses to be heirs, something that would not be permitted for witnesses to a will. dredf.org/public-policy/…

They allow others to communicate a person’s wish for euthanasia, encourage drs to count if the person is a “burden” as grounds for euthanasia, & define “self-administration” as “ingestion” of lethal medication, whether orally or by absorbing it in an IV. scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewconten…

Individuals have no right to opt out of euthanasia laws, to proactively protect themselves from being euthanised, and if they are euthanised there will be no investigation into their death.

In Belgium, doctors euthanised Nathan Verhelst, a 44-year-old trans man, after his gender affirming surgeries went poorly & he was rejected by his family. The same doctor previously euthanised deaf twins afraid they wouldn’t be able to talk w/ each other.

12ft.io/proxy?q=https%…

Belgium has since become the first country to allow child euthanasia of *any* age: edition.cnn.com/2016/09/17/hea…

Colombia allows children as young as 7 to make the decision to be euthanised: latinamericanpost.com/20090-colombia…

While the Netherlands considers children 13 and older able to consent to euthanasia, the Dutch government is advancing legislation to allow children from 1-12 years old to be allowed to choose to die: bbc.com/news/world-eur…

Canada has seen the most extreme expansion of euthanasia laws with their Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), passed over the objections of the disability community. mcgilldaily.com/2021/02/bill-c…

Prior to the expansion of MAiD, Disability Inclusion Minister Carla Qualtrough told the justice committee that it’s easier to access MAiD than to get a wheelchair in some parts of the country.

ipolitics.ca/news/senators-…

Roger Foley, a disabled man (without a terminal illness) secretly recorded doctors repeatedly attempting to coerce him to end his life in 2017, threatening to charge him $1800 a day if he remained in the hospital.

ctvnews.ca/health/chronic…

cbc.ca/news/politics/…

But that pales compared to what has happened since Canada expanded MAiD. In February 2022, after 2 years of being refused accessible housing, a woman w/ multiple chemical sensitivities requested MAiD: the government approved her application the same day.

ctvnews.ca/health/woman-w…

MAiD’s expanded criteria, allowing euthanasia for those whose death is “not reasonably foreseeable,” had not even come into effect until 17 March 2022.

Madeline, a 54-year-old woman $40,000 in medical debt, plans to get euthanasia when her money runs out this year: the government doesn’t provide enough resources for disabled people to live, but they will kill them free of charge.

chatelaine.com/health/maid-as…

In 2021, Donna Duncan, suffering post-concussion syndrome and having been denied medical care for months, was given euthanasia two days after requesting it, despite not meeting legal grounds to be euthanised.

ctvnews.ca/health/police-…

Alan Nicholas was hospitalised over fears he might be suicidal & begged his family to get him out of the hospital: within a month he was euthanised for “hearing loss,” even though he did not have access to his depression meds or his cochlear implant.

apnews.com/article/covid-…

Canada plans to expand eligibility to include all mental illnesses as well as children next year.

Over 10,000 disabled people were euthanised through MAiD in 2021 alone. canada.ca/en/health-cana…

While Canada refuses to record a MAiD death as euthanasia, instead recording it as a death from the underlying condition (eg, “hearing loss”), if it did it would make MAiD the 7th-leading cause of death in the country, accounting for 3.3% of all deaths.

www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.…

This entire thread could be about Canada. Every time I write about this there are more articles about people being forced to choose to die.

Disabled Canadians are screaming that they are being genocided, the evidence and despair is overwhelming.

globalnews.ca/news/9176485/p…

In Australia, Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) is recently legal in Western Australia and Victoria. It becomes law in Tasmania on the 23rd, in New South Wales in November, and Queensland and South Australia in January. ACT & NT are expected to follow suit very soon.

As in Canada, euthanasia deaths will be reported as their underlying conditions (whether or not those conditions would or could have killed the person). This will make it very difficult for disabled people to collect data & prove that these things are happening to us.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying (Review) Boards of Victoria, WA, and Queensland do not include disabled people: they exemplify the idea that abled people know better than disabled people what is best for disabled people (and they have decided what’s best is death).

It would be ludicrous to suggest that a male gynaecologist had a better grasp of women’s rights and lived experience than women themselves, but doctors (and family members) are still seen are more valid arbiters of our own lives than we ourselves are.

More, medical practitioners at all levels lack an understanding of disability justice, rights, & history; eugenics; euthanasia; & ableism; to say nothing of racism, anti-Indigeneity, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, & classism. We can't teach or protect if we're not in the room.

The pressures disabled people face in Australia are not altogether very different from those of us in Canada. Nearly half of disabled Australians live in poverty, over twice the OECD average and 2.5 times the Australian average.

aruma.com.au/about-us/about…

justiceandpeace.org.au/living-with-di…

We have 2x the unemployment rate & are more at risk of domestic violence, sexual assault, & mental illness. 100,000s of us sit on pensions that are half the Henderson poverty level, and less than 1% of rentals are even affordable to a person on the DSP.

miragenews.com/hearing-to-inq…

Our government has steadfastly rolled back the last pandemic protections left in place: as of Friday, people infected with covid-19 no longer have to isolate and are free to move masklessly in the community, infecting others. abc.net.au/news/2022-09-3…

Workers who WANT to isolate will no longer be able to do so, because there won't be any isolation payments for them to do so. And masks? Gone.

They know this plan will mass-kill disabled people, and create new disabled people, and they don't care.

So what’s going to happen when the state, refusing to offer enough resources to live, starts offering death on demand?

Many people don’t even qualify for disability services: non-citizens can't get the DSP (pension/money), the NDIS (support services), or Medicare (health care).

...Regardless of the severity of their disability (refugees & asylum-seekers get Medicare but not NDIS/DSP).

Citizens can't get the Disability Support Pension w/o 10 years' residency' their condition also has to be "fully treated" & "stabilised." What does this mean?

George Upjohn, a former pilot in Sydney w/ brain cancer has been repeatedly rejected for the DSP bc his condition is steadily deteriorating. He's had to sell his possessions and borrowing increasingly large amounts of money from family to stay alive.

theguardian.com/australia-news…

What happens to George when the same state that has refused to offer him the supports to live enthusiastically informs him that he qualifies to die?

What happens when they figure out instead of paying our NDIS plans every year they can just pay a one-time cost to off us?

If this scares you, good. It scares me. It's a reality I've had to live in for well over a decade, and it's gotten worse every year.

Autistics in Australia already die 17 years sooner than other Australians. I know I'm probably getting less time. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/au…

This pales compared to #ActuallyAutistic people in the US, whose life expectancy is *36*, or even Sweden, where it's only 54 (the only other countries where we have data):

Many disabilities are similar: we are among the lowest-valued people in the world.

ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.21…

I want to thank @mssinenomine for her incredible reporting on MAiD over the course of years: most things I learned about MAiD were either from her, or via people I found from her page.

For the rest I've been advocating on these issues & studying policy for about a decade.