Disability Advocate

My name is Anita Cameron. I am a disability justice activist from Rochester, NY, where I have been a member of the Regional Center for Independent Living for 20 years.

Over the years, my health has deteriorated. My last health event landed me in a nursing facility. After I got out, I applied for home health services but was denied due to new regulations enacted by the state. I would later lose my Medicaid, the only insurance I had.

Now, assisted suicide has been passed here in New York and I’m terrified. Because I no longer have access to medications I need, my chronic condition will become terminal, making me eligible for assisted suicide. It’s frightening that in a dark moment, I can request to die and will be helped to do so.

Assisted suicide is harmful. Disabled people in New York are being denied home care services or having their services severely reduced. Disabled people who rely on Medicaid are losing their insurance. The state’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program has been gutted through restructuring, reducing over 700 fiscal intermediaries in the program to only one. The results have been catastrophic.

Add to this, personal care attendants are not making a living wage, or cannot get paid, not only because of the restructuring, but typically attendants don’t get paid much. Added to this is current and proposed overtime laws and requirements that seriously harm both personal care attendants and the people they work for.

Making assisted suicide legal here in New York has now made it easier to kill, rather than care for those of us who already live with discrimination and injustice because when faced with the loss of access to services and supports, some may feel that they have no choice but to die. This is why we must end assisted suicide in New York.