Just today, William Peace at Bad Cripple wrote his own thoughts in regard to Victoria Brignell’s column on assisted suicide, which I responded to yesterday.
Peace takes on a different part of the essay by Brignell and provides a long analysis of some issues that triggered his own thought processes. Here’s the introduction:
What I want to address is the questions Brignell posed with regard to assisted suicide and social change. Brignell points out that social practices evolve quickly and wonders “Could we reach a point where it is regarded as normal for a tetraplegic [quadriplegia] person to commit suicide? And as the population ages and pressure on social care services grow, could the authorities regard legalising assisted death for severely disabled people as a convenient means of reducing the demand on an increasingly tight care budget? It seems unlikely such a dystopian vision will turn into reality in the near future”. Brignell’s assessment may be correct in the UK but I think we have already arrived at this dystopian vision in the United States and elsewhere.
That’s just the intro. There’s a lot more and it’s well worth anyone’s time to read – anyone who cares about these topics. –Stephen Drake