The day before the NYT article was published that I just took to task Mr. Mitton posted the below to his blog Death with Dignity. Link: http://dying-with-dignity.blogspot.com A hyper link to Mr. Mitton's blog was included in the NYT article. Eckholm however does not label the link or give url for the blog. I find this unacceptable given the fact the entire article relied on Compassion and Choices and the words of its president Barbara Coombs Lee. I am not at all surprised Compassion and Choices are now using and exploiting Mr. Mitton for their larger political goals--the passage of assisted suicide legislation. Read the below and explain how Compassion and Choices is the ethical organization it presents itself to be.
I find it amazing that within minutes of the New York Times posting my article online that Compassion and Choices glommed onto it like it was an article all about them! They are the very people/organization to turn their backs on me when I went to them for help in making my statement. They told me to go away and now they want to claim this article as theirs. No question this pisses me off! C&C’s Facebook post
In all fairness, they should have said on their Facebook post that Compassion and Choices decided to completely turn their backs on me and my situation! As soon as the news broke of dying with dignity in New Mexico, I started to research how it happened. It was a lawsuit brought on by C&C and the ACLU. My next step was to contact both. I had no problem getting in contact with C&C but I’ve not been able to make a dent getting through to the ACLU. I wanted to be someone that could do a little hell raising and speaking out about my situation before I pass.
I told them my plans of how I am not about to wait out the last moments of death before going, that I was going to go on my own terms. Though I qualify for hospice care, I am passing on it. The help that I would get from a hospice is something that I just won’t be needing. When I can no longer cook for myself, get up and down the stairs to my apartment, and/or use my Mac/software is when I am going to go, after eating a very nice last meal.
A couple days later I get a phone call from Pamela Mottola of C&C stating that in order for us to work together that I would have to agree that I would only starve myself to death as my form of dying!!! AYFKM!!!!
Everyone that I have told that story to, my friends who know me first show rage, then amazement and then end up laughing because of the insanity of it all! I am an ultimate foodie! I live to eat and food is about the most important thing in life. At least for me it is! To suggest that I starve myself to death is about the most bizarre and upsetting thing that I have had to deal with as far as this situation goes in a long, long time. It was truly an insult to me and I let Pamela know exactly this. The next day C&C quote “this effectively ends our relationship”. Yet minutes after the article comes out about me today, it is C&C that is trying to glom onto this article like it was about them.
Yes, they do serve a purpose. They helped New Mexico for sure. But it is not helpful for them to try to find puppets to die the way they demand the person die in order to get their help! That is EXACTLY what happened in my situation! No! This is a matter of choice! My choice! Not theirs! No one is going to be able to enforce their way of my dying my death. Not the State of Colorado and not Compassion and Choices.
Compassion and Choices turned their backs on me yet it was my face and my cat that was their last post on Facebook. They should have been fair about this and posted that they already were well aware of me! Now they ought to just keep it there and accept the flack the they might get.
Paralyzed since I was 18 years old, I have spent much of the last 30 years thinking about the reasons why the social life of crippled people is so different from those who ambulate on two feet. After reading about the so called Ashley Treatment I decided it was time to write a book about my life as a crippled man. My book, Bad Cripple: A Protest from an Invisible Man, will be published by Counter Punch. I hope my book will completed soon.
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