Posted on 12/15/2011 3:58:50 PM PST by wagglebee
The perils of the social devaluation of people include legal assisted suicide and euthanasia
It is not uncommon to hear people without disabilities and people who have recently acquired a disability say they would rather be dead than disabled.
Although politically incorrect, embedded perceptions that life with disability is full of suffering and indignity promote the idea that it's a death sentence. Able-ist social conditioning equates disability with pain, frailty, incapacity, and poor quality of life. It views persons with disabilities as problems that need to be fixed.
The 'problem' of disability
I would argue the "problem" of disability lies more in external social, physical, attitudinal, and architectural barriers.
I am considered legally blind. If you hand me something in 12 point font, I can't read it. You might say I am disabled because I can't see. However, if you give me a document in large print, I no longer have a problem. An external change resolves a biological "shortcoming."
At times I use a wheelchair. I am "disabled" by the environment around me: stairs, curbs with no access cuts, and doors that don't open automatically. However, when changes are made externally, I become self-reliant.
Negative images devaluing persons with disabilities infiltrate literature, movies, news media, and television. We are portrayed, at best, as having lives no one wants, and at worst, as freaks or deviants. Rarely are we depicted as empowered people with much to contribute to the world around us.
Same rights
Unfortunately, many people who acquire a disability internalize able-ist perspectives. They see themselves as being of less value, rather than as people who have needs which, when accommodated, help them enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as every citizen.
Dignity and wellbeing are mistakenly equated with being able-bodied. Conversely, illness or disability is associated with lack of dignity. Dignity, a key component in actions before the courts that seek to legalize euthanasia, is often defined by the notion that something like incontinence indicates a lack of dignity because it is perceived as a loss of autonomy.
Although most people would not choose to be incontinent, toileting needs can be met through the assistance of another person or a disposable incontinence product. (Please note I'm not calling them diapers; infantilizing the people who use them only reduces their dignity.) Somehow needing help to go to the bathroom is considered to have a greater detrimental impact on dignity than relying on other supports.
Many people use eyeglasses. However wearing spectacles doesn't lessen one's dignity or even one's rightful place in the world. The need to don an invisible incontinence product, on the other hand, seems a good reason to encourage someone to end it all.
Permeating politics
Able-ist attitudes permeate our politics. Canada's current immigration policy restricts persons with disabilities from immigrating to our country. It could deny someone like renowned scientist Stephen Hawking an opportunity to immigrate to Canada.
I admire Hawking. He has not succumbed to the idea that because he has ALS he has nothing left to offer. If a man who has made such significant contributions can't "make the cut," what message does that send? It says we don't really belong because we're not able-bodied.
Medical practitioners are not immune from acquiring these negative perceptions.
Years ago I initiated a conversation with an endocrinologist about the possibility of pregnancy and how it would affect a woman with my disabilities. I wanted to have children, but also wanted to be responsible by getting fair and balanced information from an expert.
My doctor's response was something like, "If people like you stopped having children, we could eliminate this disease from the face of the earth within a few generations."
I don't know if he considered that eliminating "the disease" also meant eliminating people like me. For him, the problem was inside me, and following that logic, I was the undesirable component.
The unworthy are at risk
If we are tacitly acknowledged as unworthy, we are at risk. At times of fiscal restraint, we can experience discrimination when medical budgets are limited.
It's very difficult to access information about how health care resources are allocated, but there is much evidence to support the idea that they are determined by measuring our value using subjective criteria like "quality of life."
If medical practitioners don't have the direct experience of living with disability, and if they don't make extraordinary efforts to explore beyond the bio-medical models available in med student curricula, how can doctors ever have anything but an able-ist evaluation of someone's quality of life?
If our quality of life is viewed as being narrowed, we risk having our health options shrink. If our health options are taken away, or never presented in the first place, our very existence is threatened.
It is especially when we are coming to terms with new conditions, changing conditions, or physical and psychological pain that we need to be reminded that we matter, that we are worth something.
Our dignity is inherent
Our dignity is inherent. We have dignity because we are human. Our dignity is framed within the context of our sense of, contribution to, and interaction with our communities, not about what does or doesn't work in our bodies.
If Hawking can add value to our society, we all can. We are only limited by our able-ist imaginations.
If assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalized, it could be devastating for persons with disabilities. Medical practitioners might never question the desire of someone who has acquired a disability to be euthanized, because they wouldn't consider the possibility that the requester is experiencing difficulty adjusting to a difficult change.
Realistically, acquiring a disability is about living with loss, which often requires profound adjustment and supports, but so does losing a child. Do we hand grieving parents a hypodermic of lethal medicine and say, "This must be unbearable; here's a way to end your suffering"?
Suicide prevention
Canadians seem enthusiastic about promoting suicide prevention, but is that only for able-bodied people? When we face the social message that it's better to be dead than disabled, the option of assisted suicide and euthanasia, rather than providing supports to help us live fully, puts our very lives at risk.
Rhonda Wiebe is a disability rights advocate from Winnipeg. She co-chairs the Ending of Life Ethics committee of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and serves on the Board of Directors of Not Dead Yet. She has lived with a disability since she was 13.
You're right, Ed.
A parachute not opening, that's the way to die, getting caught in a combine, having your nuts bit off by a Laplander.
That's the way l want to go.
I was there due to some Inner Ear and optic issues related to my sensory system making me one eye functional, poor coordination, and ADD ADHD type symptoms. In two years I was back at regular school.
The help they gave me allowed me to pass my armed forces physicals. It gave me till age 36 in the workforce before I had too stop. My life goes on and life has purpose.
Over 26 years ago I met a woman at work after the unexpected death of my first wife. Our lunch time together grew into dating. We grew quite serious in our love for each other.
On a date 26 years ago she collapsed at a local mall. She walked in I carried her out to her car and a fast trip following a cop to the ER. The final prognoses was quadriplegia at C-5 C-6 section of her spine. She had arm, hand, neck, and some trunk movement but it was too be permanent.
Two months into hospitalization we married. I helped her raise her children and became her caregiver. Nine years into our marriage my childhood issues became more acute and I was placed on disability. I can walk though with a cane now for balance. I have seizures almost daily due to my sensory processing system.
I would hate too think of not having the past 26 years with my wife. Adversity is a part of life. Very early in life I learned too look beyond the disability and see the person.
I also have two cousins placed in wheelchairs since birth. One is the mother of several children. Their parents {one being my first cousin} were told when they were very young they would not make it too their teens. Both are almost 40.
I will resist with all my being and ability anyone from any so called board wanting to place a value on my wife's life due to disability. I have quite strong arms and hands steady enough to make good on that.
Some people can’t get their heads around “dead”. They romanticize it as the absence of suffering and pain, but with still an awareness thereof (and without obvious religious issues like Hell).
From Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead:
Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?
Guildenstern: No.
Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It’s silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn’t it? I mean, you’d never *know* you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I’d like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You’d wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That’s the bit I don’t like, frankly. That’s why I don’t think of it. Because you’d be helpless, wouldn’t you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean, you’d be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you’re dead. It isn’t a pleasant thought. Especially if you’re dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, “I’m going to stuff you in this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?” naturally, you’d prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You’d have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, “Well, at least I’m not dead. In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out.”
[bangs on lid]
Rosencrantz: “Hey you! What’s your name? Come out of there!”
Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I’m going to kill you.
When you were a child your parents fed you, clothed you, nursed you, wiped your butt, changed your diaper, cleaned up your vomit, provided for all your needs for most kids for at least 18 years. Yet you want to piss and moan about returning as much as they gave you back to them?
Ooo...nice pic
Thanks, for the ping. ;-)
Thanks!
My pleasure, sweetie.
And I’m facing the same issues myself, it seems !
*******
Oh my, and this disabled person was zotted. Interesting......
I have a feeling I should know that quote.
I faced these issues with my husband all last summer. He died in August. “Quality of life” was brought up to me by the doctor and by my ste-son. To me, their solutions were based on THEIR quality of life instead of my husband’s. They would rid of the dealing with the problem and wouldn’t have to face it anymore if my husband was gone.
Since my husband and I had discussed his declining poor health a number of times, I knew exactly what to do, which was do everything possible to keep him alive (and screw their quality of life).
Although spouses can make decisions, I also had a medical power of attorney to stop anyone in the track when it came to making medical decisions. I suggest you have a medical power of attorney legal piece of paper - I just kept giving out copies and no one messed with me. You do have to deal with hospitals and the first thing out of their mouth is, “Do you have a living will?” I always said, no, those are death wills, not living wills and heere’s my medical power of attorney. Living wills say do not resusitate and that’s a death sentence. Make a bunch of copies of your medical power of attorney for each of you and you hold the power to keep life going.
I can tell you from months of life and death deisions for him, hospitals would rather the problem be gone in severe cases.
I’m told that a certain Teddy Bear sat behind a duckblind and bushwhacked the troll with a grenade launcher somewhere in there.
Piper just never saw it coming.
Of course, trolls never do figure out that the vending machines are rigged.
Great post!
Jeff, a Merry Christmas to you and your family.
You are FR’s resident walking miracle, and a testimony to your faith in the goodness of God, the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit.
If the life of one is considered of no value, then the life of all have no value.
If we can print trillions to bail out foreign banks, we can print green pieces of paper to save lives. We are always being set up by the godless to accept a limit on resources, a false choice in order to “save society”.
Well, we have been cleaning the air for 40 years, and it still isn’t clean enough, according to the enviro whackjobs.
We have been cleaning the water for 40 years, and it still isn’t clean enough.We have been fighting the War on Drugs for 40 years, and it never ends. The War on Poverty is in its 46th year, and there is no hope of winning in sight.
We have eliminated 60 million Americans since 1973 with abortion on demand, and after almost 39 years, every child is evidently still not a “wanted child”.
Thus, there will be no end of the ever expanding list of “undesirables” who we will be told are “just taking resources from the living”.
The rest of the world can run off that cliff. Not my country, if I can help it.
We are much better than that.
Continued good health to you, Jeff. God is not finished with you yet. You still have a job to do for Him, and when that job is done, He will promote you to Heaven. You have influenced many, and there are many more you will yet influence.
All glory to God forever and ever.
Like a midget at the urinal, I would have to stay on my toes!
;-)
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