Posted on 06/07/2008 2:38:04 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
The controversial and colorful advocate for the disabled, Harriet McBryde Johnson, died earlier this week at her Charleston home. Johnson first came to national prominence when she publicly challenged Princeton’s Peter Singer on the ethics of euthanizing profoundly disabled infants, and dedicated her life to improving the quality of life for those in institutions she called the “gulag”:
Harriet McBryde Johnson, a feisty champion of the rights of the disabled who came to prominence after she challenged a Princeton professor’s contention that severely disabled newborns could ethically be euthanized, died on Wednesday at her home in Charleston, S.C. She was 50. …
Using a battery-powered wheelchair in which she loved to “zoom around” the streets of Charleston, Ms. Johnson playfully referred to herself as “a bedpan crip” and “a jumble of bones in a floppy bag of skin.”
Rolling into an auditorium at the College of Charleston on April 22, 2001, Ms. Johnson went to the microphone during a question-and-answer session to confront Peter Singer, a philosopher from Princeton, who was giving a lecture titled “Rethinking Life and Death.” ….
An e-mail exchange followed that encounter in Charleston, leading to an invitation to debate Professor Singer at Princeton on March 25, 2002. Their two encounters were the subject of the 8,000-word Times article, which brought Ms. Johnson considerable attention in the disability rights movement and from the general public.
She also drew “considerable attention” when she argued for Congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo case. In fact, she gave one of the most dispassionate and logical arguments to stop the efforts by the court to remove Schiavo’s feeding tube, certainly less emotional than many on that side of the debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Prayers up
May the dear lady RIP.
Not much makes me teary, but thinking of this dear lady taking on Professor Death, while sitting there in her wheelchair. . .sometimes mankind really transcends. Thank God for her.
The problem with euthanizing newborns is the same as the problem with the ADA. The scale floats - it is not static and varies with the whim of the judge or administrator deciding what is reasonable.
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