I fight to ensure that everyone in Colorado — including those in our community with disabilities — has every right and freedom given to him by our constitution.
Many of those with disabilities will recognize me as an advocate on their behalf, and many elected officials in city and state government will recognize me as someone who visits them to share concerns from the disability community.
Although I was once a runner and a soccer player, I lost my ability to walk in a 2008 accident. I love my life despite my acquired disability. My disability is only physical, and I’m just as mentally alert as I’ve always been.
In some ways, my newfound disability has actually helped guide me into being an even more productive member of society: Had I not become disabled, I wouldn’t be advocating at city, state and federal levels to create increased access to all people with disabilities. Because of my disability, I’m now fighting on behalf of your grandparents who need senior assistance, your neighbor who needs a different kind of schooling, and on behalf of you, too.
People with disabilities want increased access to choice, not less choice. We want to participate in schooling just like everyone else; we want access to transportation just like everyone else; and we want access to health care options — including equal access to end-of-life options.
When the day comes that doctors tell me that I’m within six months of death, I want the ability to choose how I live my final days. Even if I choose not to take advantage of provisions of this proposed law, I am an adult and understand my own body and its limitations better than anyone else.
The End-of-Life Options Act, which will be introduced in the Colorado legislature this week, seeks to give control to individuals. The legislation addresses how people face terminal illness — and is not about disabled individuals who do not face terminal illness, as one critic of the legislation recently argued. This bill is for Coloradans who have had their quality of life taken from them by an illness that has ravaged their body that has no cure, and who have no apparatus to save them.
It gives a terminal patient the choice to live their life empowered by the choice to be freed from their illness that keeps them imprisoned in pain by medicines and machines.
The reasoning behind the End-of-Life Options Act is not about one choice, it’s about many choices in hospice care.
There are safeguards in the bill that require a minimum of two doctors who diagnose a terminal illness, medical professionals who are trained to identify if that request is coming from a place of peace or depression.
The bill also requires that the individual making the request is of sound mind, and understands all of the options in prolonging the short time that they have on this earth. Nothing in the proposed law includes or excludes people with disabilities — and it should stay that way.
This bill is about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as our Declaration of Independence guarantees. I love my life, and I pursue happiness every day. In those final days, however, I want the liberty to choose how I remain here and how I move on. I want you to have that choice, too, when you meet the strict criteria outlined in the bill.
That is what I want for everyone — including people with disabilities — who face terminal illness. I welcome whatever protections we can get to make our final days the best that we can in our home in the arms of our loved ones.
Chris Hinds is a former board member for the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation’s Colorado chapter.
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