Weighing in on assisted suicide

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) -- For the first time in about 20 years state lawmakers held a public hearing on the emotionally charged issue of assisted suicide.

Oregon and a couple of other states have passed assisted suicide laws in the past two decades and some think Connecticut should do the same, but there is a very vocal opposition.

Elaine Kolb of West Haven has been arrested 19 times protesting for disability rights. She was joined by many other disability rights advocates Wednesday in condemning a proposal before the Public Health Committee, and she did it in song.

"Oh we're not dead yet, and we can boogie with the best of them. We are not...dead...yet!"

The bill before the committee would allow a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose prescription to a patient determined to be mentally competent but terminally ill.
      
Many of the disabled in attendance Wednesday fear that such a law would be used to convince people like them to call it quits, that it would open the door to a different kind of future.

"A future in which my life may be thought of as too expensive or too burdensome on the society," said Cathy Ludlum, of Manchester.

"When you balance budgets by cutting back things that people absolutely need to survive and then provide the opportunity to get a poison pill...hmm...something is wrong with this picture," said Elaine Kolb, of West Haven.

The advocates for the disabled also imply that there is a very real danger that the elderly may be tricked into taking their own lives by greedy relatives or conservators. Not so say those in favor.
    
"There are safeguards about two doctors who must agree to the prescription," said Mary Fran Libassi, of Bloomfield, "someone who must agree that you're not depressed and someone who also must agree that you're within six months of terminal death."
      
Sara Myers, who suffers from a progressively degenerative disease that will eventually kill her, also sees it differently.

"The legal right to do it would give me the opportunity, if I ever made the choice, to do it without violence and to do it surrounded with the people that I love," Myers said.

Many pushing for this 'aid in dying' bill say that none of the issues brought up by the opposition have really been evident in the states where this has become law.