St Louis University: employee who signed abortion rights letter apologized, retracted support

The Smith family at the motherhouse for the Nashville Dominican sisters on the solemnity of the Assumption, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Colin Smith

CNA Staff, Aug 28, 2024 / 13:20 pm (CNA).
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Washington D.C., Jan 27, 2021 / 04:17 pm (CNA).- A disability rights organization praised United Nations human rights experts for condemning voluntary euthanasia on the basis of disability.

On Monday, three UN human rights experts issued a joint statement condemning the “growing trend” of countries that extend legal assisted suicide to people who have disabilities, but who do not have a terminal condition. 

They added that a disability “should never be a ground or justification to end someone’s life directly or indirectly, and that a government “[u]nder no circumstance” should help “a person with a disabling condition who is not dying to terminate their life.”

In response, Diane Coleman, president of the disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, praised the decision of UN officials. 

“Every major U.S. national disability group that has taken a position on assisted suicide laws opposes them for the very compelling reasons expressed by the United Nations Office of Human Rights,” Coleman told CNA on Wednesday. 

Throughout parts of western Europe, it is legal for a disabled person who is not terminally ill to request and receive euthanasia. Canada is currently considering Bill C-7, which would permit those who do not have a “reasonably foreseeable” death to receive euthanasia. 

Coleman praised the UN officials for defending the dignity of persons with disabilities.

“As the statement says, ‘Disability should never be a ground or justification to end someone’s life directly or indirectly,’ and we strongly agree,” she told CNA.

Coleman noted that the statement did not mention that the terminally ill who seek to end their lives “primarily request assisted suicide because of disability-related concerns” such as the loss of autonomy.  

“People with advanced terminal conditions are a subset of all people with disabilities,” said Coleman. “So I really think that the concerns raised by the U.N. Office of Human Rights apply across the board.”

The three UN experts who issued the joint statement are Gerard Quinn, Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities; Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; and Claudia Mahler, Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons. 

The UN’s human rights office said that bills extending euthanasia to persons with disabilities “would institutionalize and legally authorize ableism.”

Quinn, De Schutter, and Mahler warned that normalizing euthanasia for persons with disabilities who are not terminally ill would draw upon “ableist assumptions about the inherent ‘quality of life’ or ‘worth’ of the life of a person with a disability.” 

“These assumptions, which are grounded in ableism and associated stereotypes, have been decisively rejected by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” they said. “Disability is not a burden or a deficit of the person. It is a universal aspect of the human condition.”

Canada’s Bill C-7 was introduced in the country’s Parliament following the Quebec Superior Court’s 2019 ruling that the requirement of a “reasonably foreseeable death” to receive euthanasia was a violation of rights under the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The two plaintiffs in the case, Jean Truchon and Nicole Gladu, were both diagnosed with disabling conditions that are not terminal. Truchon received euthanasia in April, 2020. 

All countries with legal active euthanasia—where a doctor can legally end a patient’s life at their request—have ratified the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or its optional protocol. 

The three experts also said that the elderly or disabled “may feel subtly pressured to end their lives prematurely” on account of “attitudinal barriers as well as the lack of appropriate services and support.” 

Poverty, too, plays a role, as “the proportion of people with disabilities living in poverty is significantly higher” than those without disabilities, they said.

“People with disabilities condemned to live in poverty due to the lack of adequate social protection can decide to end their lives as a gesture of despair,” they said. “Set against the legacy of accumulated disadvantages their ‘architecture of choice’ could hardly be said to be unproblematic.”

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CNA Staff, Jul 22, 2020 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- A Michigan pro-life group has said it will not contest the state’s conclusion that the group did not submit enough valid signatures on a petition to ban dilation and evacuation abortions, and will instead focus its advocacy efforts on the 2020 election.

“We know we submitted signatures from more than 340,047 registered voters. It is tragic that children will continue to be dismembered because we lost just enough signatures due to errors and petition damage like small tears and stains,” Barbara Listing, Right to Life of Michigan President, said in a July 21 statement.

“The effort behind this petition drive was worth it and will carry forward…This was our first attempt to end the dismemberment of babies in Michigan, and we will continue working until we end this form of violence and protect the lives of every unborn child.”

Genevieve Marnon, Right to Life of Michigan’s legislative director, told The Detroit News that this marks the first time that one of RTLM’s initiatives has failed.

Although Right to Life of Michigan submitted 380,000 signatures, the state elections bureau estimated that only about 333,000 were valid. The petition needed 340,047 signatures in order to proceed.

The proposed ban would have made it a felony for a physician to perform a dilation and evacuation abortion. D&E abortions are typically done in the second trimester of pregnancy and result in the dismemberment of an unborn child.

The method is used in Michigan for more than half of all second-trimester abortions, including 84% of those performed after the 16th week of pregnancy, the AP reported.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she would veto any pro-life legislation. Governor Whitmer last October line-item vetoed from the state’s budget $700,000 in funding for the Michigan Pregnancy and Parenting Support Services Program, to the consternation of the Michigan Catholic Conference and a pro-life group active in the state.

The ballot initiative push was a way for the D&E ban to become law without the need for Whitmer’s signature, as Right to Life of Michigan had hoped to submit the ban to the state’s Republican-led legislature for enactment rather than put it on the November ballot, The Detroit News reported.

Listing attributed the petition’s failure to several overlapping factors, including some signers not knowing their voter registration status or forgetting they already signed the petition.

In addition, based on the high turnout from the 2018 election in Michigan, the threshold the state set for a petition to succeed was higher than normal, Listing said. She said the group this time submitted about 65,000 more signatures than they had in 2013 in their successful petition drive to stop taxes from paying for abortion insurance coverage.

“It wasn’t enough this time,” she lamented.

Listing also said a “competing” pro-life petition, circulating at the same time as theirs, confused people. That petition sought to ban abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat and was sponsored by a group called Michigan Heartbeat Coalition.

The Michigan Catholic Conference had last year thrown its support behind the D&E petition, opposing the heartbeat bill due to the existence of an even stronger piece of anti-abortion legislation.

“It goes without saying that after countless hours and with myriad people volunteering at hundreds of Catholic parishes across the state to collect signatures that this outcome is disappointing,” said Rebecca Mastee, MCC’s policy advocate.

“Each and every person who assisted in this petition drive is cherished and thanked. We have incredible gratitude for their pro-life dedication and the tremendous effort to raise awareness while gathering signatures. Saint Teresa of Calcutta taught us that God does not require us always to be successful, but rather to be faithful; indeed, the effort to protect human life through this petition drive was immense.”

Pro-lifers in several states, such as Tennessee, have opposed heartbeat legislation due to the potential of expensive legal and constitutional challenges.

In addition, the MCC pointed out out that Michigan law presently prohibits all abortion, but this law is not enforced due to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

Should Roe be overturned, that law banning abortion would go back into effect. But if the proposed heartbeat bill were to become law and Roe were to be overturned, MCC argued, it would actually liberalize existing Michigan abortion law and permit the abortion of infants prior to the detection of a fetal heartbeat.

The coalition of Michigan volunteers was not the only group gathering signatures for pro-life petitions during the pandemic. In May, pro-life advocates in Colorado successfully gathered enough signatures to put a late-term abortion ban on the November ballot.

If the late-term abortion ban passes in November, it would mark the first time since 1967 that Colorado would impose voter-approved restrictions on abortion.

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