Terri Schiavo's Death Marks a New Beginning in the Fight for Our Lives, say Disability Activists
The disability community joins the Schindler family in mourning the death of Terri Schiavo. We renew our resolve to continue the battle to promote meaningful safeguards for the thousands of disabled Americans who, like Terri Schiavo, have guardians making life-and-death decisions on their behalf. The dangers to people with disabilities did not begin with the publicized tragedy of Terri Schiavo and they do not end with her death. We need to work together in a nonpartisan way to ensure meaningful support, legal safeguards, and access to medical care for the millions of old, ill and disabled Americans who are endangered on many fronts.
(PRWEB) March 31, 2005 -- The disability community joins Robert and Mary
Schindler in mourning over the death of their daughter, Terri Schiavo. In spite
of the work of a broad-based array of supporters, the efforts to prevent Terri
Schiavo’s death through starvation and dehydration ultimately
failed.
Even as we mourn, we renew our resolve to continue the battle to
promote meaningful safeguards for the thousands of disabled Americans who, like
Terri Schiavo, have guardians making life-and-death decisions on their behalf.
The dangers to people with disabilities did not begin with the publicized
tragedy of Terri Schiavo and they do not end with her death.
We need to
work together in a nonpartisan way to ensure meaningful support, legal
safeguards, and access to medical care for the millions of old, ill and disabled
Americans who are endangered on many fronts.
What the Disability Rights
Movement Wants
Meaningful Federal Review
Congressional action along
the lines developed by Senators Harkin and Martinez in the U.S. Senate,
providing for federal civil rights review of contested third party decisions to
withhold treatment in the absence of an advance directive or personally
appointed surrogate.
Congressional Investigation of Non-Voluntary
Euthanasia, Establishment of Safeguards
Congressional hearings or other
examination of the appropriateness of further federal action to protect people
from non-voluntary euthanasia based on the decisions of statutory guardians or
health care providers.
Equal Time in an Open Public Discussion
An open
public discussion: Nothing about us without us– disability rights movement
experts should have equal time in media debates with bioethicists like Art
Caplan. Media must stop following the right vs. left script given them by the
bioethicists decades ago. Accordingly, the disability rights movement’s experts
should be given the same media airtime as spokespersons for the religious
right.
State-By-State Policy Reform
Funding for state-by-state review
of guardianship and health care decisions laws by protection and advocacy
systems and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund to develop reforms
to safeguard against non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia.
Public
Education by People with Disabilities
Funding for public education about the
perspectives of people living with significant disabilities on the difference
between end-of-life decisions and decisions to end the lives of disabled people
who are not otherwise dying.
Partial Moratorium on
Dehydration/Starvation
A moratorium on the removal of food and water from
people diagnosed in “persistent vegetative state” and “minimally conscious
state” in the absence of new diagnostic processes discussed in recent medical
journal Neurology, or a written advance directive/power of attorney by the
person.
Olmstead Implementation, Passage of MICASSA
Implementation of
the rights of people with disabilities to long-term supports in the community
under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead. We call for passage of the
Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports Act, which would allow people
receiving Medicaid funding to have a life in the community instead of being
forced into a nursing home.
Sustain Government Funded Health Care
Programs
Conservatives who honestly supported efforts to protect the life of
Terri Schiavo should work on a bipartisan basis with moderates and liberals to
ensure continued appropriate funding of Medicare and Medicaid. Proposed budget
cuts threaten to result in a less-public, but very real, increase in the numbers
of deaths of older and disabled people, even more prolonged and agonizing than
the one experienced by Terri Schiavo, through lack of access to needed
healthcare.
Not Dead Yet is a national disability rights group that leads
opposition in the disability community to legalized assisted suicide, euthanasia
and other forms of medical killing.
Contact: Diane Coleman, Stephen Drake
708-209-1500, ext. 11 & 29; 708-420-0539 (cell)
On the web: http://www.notdeadyet.org
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb223664.htm