Thanks to the LA Times for sharing Matt’s letter, which strongly opposes assisted suicide laws.

Read his letter to the editor below:

Steve Lopez asks, “Will the option [of assisted suicide] be there for others?”

To plaintiffs in the referenced lawsuit and many in the disability, older adult and BIPOC communities, our question is: With assisted suicide on the books, will it be the only “healthcare” to which we have equal access?

It is a privileged, bourgeois set of experiences that frames this issue as choice rather than civil rights, as if everyone in California has equal access to excellent care.

When it’s easier for someone on Medi-Cal with life-threatening disability to get suicide drugs than a mental health consult, and when University of California health systems won’t serve the majority of people of color due to low Medi-Cal reimbursement rates, the state has effectively created a death funnel for devalued groups.

To answer Lopez’s question: Taking one’s own life isn’t criminalized in California, and the right to refuse care is firmly established. This lawsuit doesn’t argue to change either of those things. We simply stand firm on healthcare equity and against a public policy at odds with it.

You can read the original article in question here and all the letters to the editor here.