Bill Scott of Inclusion Scotland discusses the potentially negative impact of an assisted suicide bill
Inclusion Scotland acknowledge that disabled people have differing views on the issue of assisted suicide. However, one of the misconceptions about the assisted suicide bill is that state assistance would be limited to those with a terminal illness.
In fact anyone with a condition that limits life expectancy, and even someone frightened of contracting a condition in the future, would qualify for state assistance in ending their life.
Those are very wide parameters. For example, today 250,000 Scots have clinically significant depression. Depression contributes to shorter life expectancy.
Those with a learning impairment are also have a shorter life expectancy (20 years less) than non-disabled people.
Even conditions such as blindness and deafness, that are not in themselves threats to health, are accompanied by social isolation that limits life expectancy.
We believe it is very dangerous for government to give priority to enabling disabled people to have choice, dignity and control over the manner of their deaths when they are denied the support they need to have the same control over their lives.
We believe it is very dangerous for government to give priority to enabling disabled people to have choice, dignity and control over the manner of their deaths when they are denied the support they need to have the same control over their lives.
That is to play into the hands of a government that garners support for cuts to publicly funded benefits (eg Disability Living Allowance, Employment Support Allowance) and services (Home Care) by demonising and dehumanising those who need them.
Disabled people are being portrayed in the gutter media as workshy scroungers who are a burden on society.
Small wonder then that this is increasingly how disabled people think of themselves – as a burden on society and their families. This is the single largest reason that people give when applying for state help in committing suicide in Oregon (where assisted suicide is already legal).
At the heart of the bill lies a fundamental misunderstanding of the impact of impairment on quality of life.
Quality of life is not solely determined by any medical condition, no matter how severe or limiting.
It is also dependant on many other factors including public attitudes towards disability (stigma, fear and the hate crime that disabled people experience); the availability and quality of support and the degree of choice and control that disabled people have over their lives.
Branded as a burden on society, socially isolated from family and community life and facing a future blighted by poverty and humiliating assessments, any rational person might question the value of continuing to live.
Yet these are not the inevitable outcomes of a medical condition, they are outcomes of inadequately funded and poorly designed public policies that value human life only in financial terms.
First and foremost, what disabled people want is to be treated as equal citizens, with services that give them the same dignity, choice and control over their lives as anyone else.
Bill Scott is director of policy at Inclusion Scotland
