Panel delves into women’s issues
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ST. IGNATIUS — Addiction, Social Security and mental health were just some of the topics covered in a panel discussion sponsored by the Flathead Reservation Human Rights Coalition and focused on women’s issues last Wednesday evening. A panel of six women in various professions discussed some of the local resources available to women through organizations like the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Victim Assistance Program, the Western Montana Area VI Agency on Aging and Disability Rights Montana.
Panelists were Bernadette Franks-Ongoy, Executive Director of Disability Rights Montana; Tammy Walston, Information and Assistance Coordinator for the Western Montana Area VI Agency on Aging; Brook Spotted Eagle, Salish Kootenai College Outreach Advocate and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Victim Assistance Program; Renee Roullier-Madrigal, mental health therapist; Sheron L. Green, first and only woman decorated with a Purple Heart in the Vietnam War; and Elizabeth Hubble, co-director of the University of Montana’s women and gender studies program.
After each panelist gave a brief overview of what her job entails, a question and answer session allowed attendees of the meeting, mostly women, to ask for advice on specific issues.
One woman brought up the country’s current climate of fear, especially related to the political sector, and asked Roullier-Madrigal to discuss ways to keep a healthy mind amid such turmoil.
“The first step is being aware that you are not 'fear,'” she responded.
Prayer, positive thinking and remembering that “we are not our emotions” are also important methods of dealing with fear, she added.
Harold Young, FRHRC member, asked Franks-Ongoy how Disability Rights Montana helps people deal with Social Security red tape, which he has found to be extremely frustrating. In five years of dealing with the disability declaration process, Young said, he saw an actual Social Security employee once, “and that was a receptionist at a window.”
"It is a real big problem ... because folks that are calling Social Security are people that are in need of services,” Franks-Ongoy said. “It is a very frustrating problem. We do have one person in our office (whose) entire job is to help people get their Social Security benefits."
Walston added that the Western Montana Area VI Agency on Aging also helps senior citizens deal with collecting their Social Security benefits.
Franks-Ongoy was also asked to discuss Disability Rights Montana’s position on physician-assisted suicide. As a civil rights protection and advocacy organization for disabled people, the group is against Montana allowing physician-assisted suicide under the current healthcare system, she explained, “because of the unintended consequences” such a law would have.
“The biggest concern that we have is, under Medicaid, hospice is not a mandatory service," Franks-Ongoy said.
Currently, the state does cover hospice care, but if budget cutbacks were to change that, terminally ill patients could be left without a way to pay for hospice. In such a situation, physician-assisted suicide might seem like the best way to deal with the financial burdens of long-term illness, leading people who wouldn’t otherwise choose to end their lives to do so.
"Women are traditionally economically disadvantaged,” Franks-Ongoy pointed out. “If you don't have an economic option, and you don't want to leave your family economically disadvantaged, how is that not coercion (to opt for physician-assisted suicide)?"
Disability Rights Montana has intervened in 11 cases where doctors erroneously declared patients terminally ill, she continued. Of those 11 cases, 10 patients are still alive, and all the cases are more than six months old — proof that there are flaws in the system, she said.
"This isn't about an argument, and that's the most frustrating part,” Franks-Ongoy said. “Whenever I've gone to a forum, (the physician-assisted suicide issue) ends up polarizing people."
