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Posted on 03/31/2005 7:26:56 AM PST by SusanD

What the Disability Rights Movement Wants Eight things that need to happen to safeguard against non-voluntary euthanasia in the U.S.

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.

CONTINUATION OF 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.

Pinellas county, Florida subhuman murderer Judgenfuhrer Greer:
"Tonight begins Holocaust Remembrance Month.
Never forget that we Judges in Florida --who rule you and let you live at our convenience--
celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Month with our worldwide public
2 week starvation-execution of a young handicapped woman.
Now that America's honor is finished in the eyes of the World, thanks to me and my black-robed Mullahs,
you have no more hope. You WILL serve us,
and then quietly die when we have all of your money or are in sudden need your organs."

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Theresa Marie Schindler - December 3, 1963 - Murdered by Judges for NOTHING: March 31, 2005 (after Judicial torture)

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