People with disabilities have never been under greater threat at the hands of healthcare policy change than they are right now.

In late April, after 10 years of defeating proposed assisted suicide bills, the Delaware legislature passed House Bill 140 to legalize assisted suicide. New Delaware Governor Matt Meyer signed the bill, which passed by a razor thin margin, into law on May 20, 2025. The year before, Meyer’s predecessor Governor John Carney vetoed the bill, citing the absence of “firm consensus” in the medical community and a position of fundamental opposition to state law enabling someone to take their own life.

Delaware now joins 10 other states and the District of Columbia in offering prescriptions for lethal drugs to patients diagnosed with a terminal illness. This is disheartening news. With my fellow Delaware state advocates and national advocates, we felt the sting of the loss, because we know how this will adversely affect society’s most vulnerable: the poor, the elderly and the disabled, who are often one and the same.

On the heels of this loss, the New York Senate voted on June 9 to pass S. 138, an assisted suicide bill with no residency requirements and no waiting period. The bill will be sent to the Governor’s desk to sign or veto. Convinced of its deadly harms, we strongly urge Governor Kathy Hochul to protect and promote the rights of people with disabilities and veto this bill which calls death by suicide a cure simply because you happen to have a disability.

Legalizing assisted suicide is always dangerous. For vulnerable populations, such as those with disabilities, the elderly and those struggling with mental illness, assisted suicide represents corruption and erosion of trust in healthcare professionals and the patient-physician relationship. It also incentivizes healthcare systems and insurance companies to push for lethal prescriptions instead of life-affirming care. With more than 61 million Americans with disabilities and an increasing decline to upholding Hippocratic medicine values and traditions, providing ongoing care for people with disabilities will seem like the more burdensome and less humane thing to do. Prescribing lethal drugs will be the preferred and inexpensive solution to remove the “burden” and absolve the prescriber of any guilt.

Ian McIntosh,  a longtime disability rights advocate and Interim Executive Director with Not Dead Yet, wrote in this June 11, 2025 blog post about how New York’s assisted suicide bill seeks to “ratify the assisted, premature deaths” of persons with disabilities or illness. He also writes that those with a disability are viewed by others as “having a fate worse than death.” Given that, assisted suicide proponents, healthcare professionals, healthcare systems, legislators and the non-disabled public may view giving lethal prescriptions to a person with disabilities as a “rational idea.”

We should all be horrified by such rationalizing of state-sanctioned killing cloaked in the guise of a “merciful and dignified act” for someone who is dealing with a chronic condition, illness or disability, whether they were born with it or acquired it. Ignorance of the specific unmet needs of a person with disabilities can never be the reason for legalizing assisted suicide as the only logical “solution” left.

Advocacy and education remain essential to help others see the inherent value and worth of those with and without disabilities.

The increasing push for legalizing assisted suicide serves to incentivize healthcare facilities and insurance companies to authorize lethal prescriptions but not pay for life-affirming care. A patient with disabilities in such a system could only wonder then what the attitude of their physician toward them would be in caring for them.

In this October 2022 Health Affairs article entitled “‘I Am Not the Doctor For You:’ Physicians’ Attitudes Towards Caring For People With Disabilities,” it was acknowledged that “people with disabilities face barriers when attempting to gain access to health care settings,” and the article’s findings suggested a “general reluctance among some physicians to care for people with disabilities,” which exacerbated healthcare disparities. This February 2021 Health Affairs article entitled “Physicians’ Perception of People with Disabilities and Their Health Care” reported, “In [a] survey of 714 practicing US physicians nationwide, 82.4 percent reported that people with significant disability have worse quality of life than nondisabled people…[T]hese findings about physicians’ perceptions of this population raise questions about ensuring equitable care to people with disability. Potentially biased views among physicians could contribute to persistent health care disparities affecting people with disability.”

If the physician of a patient with disabilities views their patient as having a lower quality of life than those without disabilities, they may be less likely to consider them for other types of treatment such as palliative care. Instead, where medical futility and disability bias is present, a healthcare professional might suggest assisted suicide as an equal curative option. That is discrimination.

Assisted suicide laws create a two-tiered healthcare system, where those with disabilities are given assistance with their suicide and those without disabilities are given suicide prevention. It is an obvious moral failing to help people kill themselves having never fully helped them to live.

In partnership with healthcare professionals and lawmakers who champion disability rights in the pursuit of empowering people with disabilities and viewing them as full citizens, our society’s most vulnerable deserve the same care and concern as every other person.

Year after year, assisted suicide proponents increase their efforts to impose assisted suicide across the country. We are preparing to defeat such bills that will be reintroduced in state legislatures in 2026. Our advocacy engagement is working. Since 1997, only 11 states and the District of Columbia have decriminalized assisted suicide. In that same amount of time, nearly 400 bills have been defeated or withdrawn. That momentum is a testament to the strength of the opposition argument and to the invaluable work CMDA members have accomplished along with our coalition partners.

At CMDA, we believe in relieving a patient’s suffering and helping patients value their lives at every stage. Our commitment to protect the vulnerable will continue recognizing the inherent value of all human life.