Assisted suicide attacked from an unlikely front

Los Angeles activist Laura Remson Mitchell, 62, a San Fernando Valley activist with multiple sclerosis, kidney disease and diabetes, added that the federal government is considering cuts in aid "for people who are disabled and trying to live productive lives, and I find it disturbing that at a time like that we're even talking about assisted suicide, which would be a great way to cut costs and leave everybody with a clean conscience."

Remson Mitchell said her own health has "been kind of going downhill" over the last year. "The conditions I have are expensive to treat, and it would be a lot cheaper for the healthcare system to just let my health go to the point where I would want to die."

The activists believe the success they've had in combating assisted suicide legislation stems in part from the fact that they cannot be branded as religious conservatives and thus have more credibility among liberals and moderates.

"We were not part of a moral or religious overlay, but, rather, we were speaking to the public policy," said Ann Guerra, who has multiple sclerosis and is executive director of an independent living center in Grass Valley, Calif.

Disabled rights activists, however, resist being portrayed as the decisive force in the struggle, preferring to depict themselves as part of a broad coalition that includes religious believers and various medical associations.

One of the bill's co-sponsors, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), said that "we really had two main groups working against us: the Catholic Church and the disability rights folks."

Twenty-one states, including some "blue states" with progressive voting records, have rejected assisted suicide laws. "What has happened in each of these states," Golden said, "is that a cross-constituency has come together that spans left, right and center."

Not all disability rights advocates oppose medically assisted suicide. Public opinion polls indicate rank-and-file disabled people tend to favor the practice, given adequate safeguards, but activists have attacked those polls as misleading.

Alan Toy was 3 when polio struck him, the same year Longmore was afflicted. The disease cost Toy the use of his legs. At 57, he is an accomplished film actor, a member of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union and founder of Living Independently in Los Angeles, an online resource for disabled people.