Disabled people like me fear legal assisted suicide:
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... it suggests that some lives are less worth living
Disabled people look to doctors to help us live, not to help us die, writes Jane Campbell.
Many terminally ill and disabled people oppose assisted suicide.
Not a single organisation of, or for, disabled people, or one representing people with long-term health conditions has campaigned for assisted suicide to be legalised.
We recognise that Section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 provides essential protection for all suicidal people, including terminally ill and disabled people.
If you believe that terminal illness or disability is sufficient reason to desire suicide, what does it say about your perceptions of terminally ill and disabled people? Are we really so different from you?
‘But it’s not about you,’ is the challenge we hear most frequently. Those seeking to change the law claim to do so only for patients deemed to be terminally ill, with strict criteria to be met before an assisted suicide can be considered.
Readers of The BMJ w...
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