Wesley Smith on the role that the disability-rights community has had on assisted-suicide legislation

The energetic commitment of the disabled-rights community, more than any other single factor, has thwarted the assisted-suicide movement. Because disability-rights activists are generally politically liberal, distinctly secular in outlook, and often supportive of abortion rights, the media can no longer caricature assisted-suicide opponents as religious busybodies. Moreover, people who would jump head first off a skyscraper if pro-lifers told them not to will listen to the opinions of disability-rights activists with open minds. As a result, some polls now show a sharp drop in the support for legalizing assisted suicide.

This “ecumenical” approach is now being applied to other issues that threaten the sanctity and equality of human life in the U.S. The disability-rights community has been deeply engaged in the struggle to save the life of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who a court determined should be dehydrated. They are also prime opponents of the neo-eugenics that permeate the bioethics movement. They have, for example, vocally opposed “futile-care theory,” which would permit doctors to unilaterally refuse a patient’s request for life-sustaining treatment, based on the perceived “quality” of that patient’s life.

Political conservatives and pro-life advocates will not always agree with the public-policy positions taken by the disability-rights community, and vice versa. But both realize that they have shared interests when it comes to some of the most important sanctity- and equality-of-life issues of our times. The political maturity exhibited by their willingness to work together on issues on which they agree — without demanding that deeply held convictions on other issues be sacrificed — is a winning political strategy. Just ask the assisted-suicide movement: It’s licking painful political wounds at the very time it expected to be enjoying electoral triumph.