Monthly Archives

September 2017

A response to disability rights activists’ opposition to the right to die, PART 2

By | Disability, Disability Rights, Not Dead Yet | One Comment

In Part 1, I began explaining why the disability rights group Not Dead Yet opposes Death With Dignity laws and the right to die. I also provided the most recent data from Oregon’s experience with its DWDA to refute some of the claims of Not Dead Yet.

All of the arguments made against the DWD laws by Not Dead Yet are false or misleading.

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A response to disability rights activists’ opposition to the right to die, PART 1

By | Choice, Death With Dignity Act, Disability, Disability Rights, Not Dead Yet | No Comments

Five years ago in Massachusetts, the right to autonomy in one’s body went down to defeat in a vote related to irrational fear by some disability rights advocates working through the activist group Not Dead Yet. Their position was that they would be compelled or coerced into ending their own lives if the initiative passed.

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A toast “to life” may include the wish for a peaceful death

By | Advance Directives, Death With Dignity Act, DNR, End-of-life care, Final Exit Network, Hospice | 2 Comments

Nearly everyone hopes for a peaceful death; yet such an end can be elusive. Many of us face both philosophical and practical questions as we do what we can to make our own deaths peaceful.

Some of us may have religious questions. Judaism, like many other religions, is all over the map in its thinking about ways to achieve a peaceful death.

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I’ll See Myself Out, Thank You: Notes on the Right to Die

By | Choice, Death With Dignity Act, Paliative Care, Rational Death | One Comment

Two years ago, a book of thirty essays supporting the right to assisted death edited by Colin Brewer and Michael Irwin, was published by Skyscraper Publications, Ltd. Most of the essays make arguments familiar to Americans involved in the right-to-die movement, but often with a European (and British) take that makes them fresh. Others tell first-person stories that are as riveting as any heard in the US.

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