PERSPECTIVE ON PROPOSITION 161 : Deciding Whose Life Has Value : The measure would give the disabled, the aged, those with AIDS fewer protections than death-row inmates.

I am a mature woman. I have been married to one man for 13 years, have raised a child and have owned two homes. I have a doctorate and have spent the last 15 years teaching, publishing articles, and counseling persons about their life problems. Some refer to me as a national expert in my field.

Another fact of my life is that, due to childhood polio, I am one of thousands of persons in this country who rely on respirators to live. Because I accept it as a “user-friendly” invention and not as an enemy, I allow my ventilator to assist and enhance what I consider to be a full and meaningful life. Yet because I would die in a short time without it, many doctors label my respirator a “life support” and view me as terminally ill.

Attitude research consistently indicates that even trained medical professionals frequently harbor negative and prejudicial views toward people with severe disabilities and incurable illnesses. That is precisely what is so dangerous about the proposed physician-assisted death law--Proposition 161 on the November ballot. Proposition 161 would allow such professionals to help me die if I asked them to, and if two doctors would certify my condition as “terminal.”

Now, what happens if, for whatever reason, I become clinically depressed and decide I want to end it all? If 161 passes, I could receive a lethal treatment more readily than a prisoner on death row. I would have fewer legal protections for my life than a prison inmate.

I would also have fewer clinical protections. Suicide prevention services for people like me are not a popular line item on most budgets. Who will argue for the value of my life and counter my demons of despair if I lose the strength to fight myself?

What many political progressives who support 161 seem to be denying is that people with severe disabilities, people with terminal illnesses, including AIDS, and people of advanced age are dangerously devalued in this society, especially the many who are impoverished or isolated in nursing homes. Our society discards what it has no use for. Laws like 161 will open the door to the silent massive dumping of people deemed useless.

We know from official reports in the Netherlands (where euthanasia has been socially but not legally sanctioned) that once prohibitions against mercy death are relaxed, things move swiftly. When such deaths can be hastened in privacy without the monitoring agency of the courts, guidelines loosen, numbers go uncounted. Conservative estimates indicate that more than 10% of all fatalities in the Netherlands each year are physician-assisted deaths of persons who never requested or consented to euthanasia in any form.

We have become awfully quick to assume that there is no reason to defend the value of a person’s life when he or she is incurably ill, old or in pain. No doubt such stereotypes contribute to the despair of persons in those conditions. I know one of my most depressing daily obstacles as a disabled person is the pervasive public attitude that my life is not valuable. Are we as a society arrogant enough to believe we can distinguish that easily between lives worth supporting and lives worth terminating? Do we really want doctors to have this additional power?

The study of terminally ill people who have expressed a desire to die but have instead been offered modern pain treatment and therapy for depression is more enlightening than all the public debate over 161. The professionals who offer such treatments report that most of their patients later thank them for preventing them from making the irreversible decision to die.

It is disturbingly ironic that as celebrities such as Dick Cavett and Patty Duke describe their battles with suicidal depression and urge us to support clinical intervention, we are also being sold a campaign to assist the deaths of some people. On one hand, we hear the message that anyone can despair, anyone can need support and should get it. On the other hand, we hear some people’s despair should be addressed by swiftly facilitating their demise.

We already have a physician in Michigan who, thumbing his nose at judicial rulings and standards of medical practice, is single-handedly diminishing the population of middle-aged women with health problems. Will California be the next suicide mecca of the disenfranchised? If 161 passes, its deadly power will certainly fall with unequal impact on the devalued vs. the valued citizens of California and beyond. That double standard is nothing more than anti-choice, pro-oppression discrimination.

There is nothing progressive about Proposition 161 except its potential for abuse to people like me.