From today’s edition of the Wisconsin State Journal:
Two days before Gov. Scott Walker won election, a gigantic splash rippled across the lagoon of Lake Mendota. Bystanders ran to the lagoon, calling 911 on their cell phones. Seconds later fire trucks and emergency vehicles soared across Northport Drive, sirens blaring. As local television reporters appeared on the scene, the electric wheelchair dangled from the hook and ladder. Then divers brought up the dead man’s body.
The usual questions were asked: Why was he alone? Where was his care attendant? Then people forgot about the disabled man – it was just another tragic statistic that the news media and disabled organizations tried to hide from the public, especially the disabled community.
But this suicide demands attention to keep another tragedy from happening. My nonverbal friend’s suicide was due in part to the bad assisted care he received. Care workers didn’t come on time or at all, leaving him lying in a urine-soaked bed. One attendant fed him four grapes at a time, almost choking him. Some call for a job interview, then come late or don’t even show up.
I urge everyone to read the entire essay by Steven Salmon, because the warning he’s issuing applies to just about every state in the country – in which the amount and availability of community-based services people with disabilities need are being cut or are severely threatened, while insitutions remain relatively unscathed – as do the most wealthy in each state, who are mostly getting their taxes cut.
Salmon describes how insufficient existing systems are for disabled people who have the “strange” desire to work and live in the community.
Salmon finishes his essay with this:
These are tough economic times, but cutting Medicaid isn’t an answer. Putting the disabled in institutions would be a disgrace. Walker would never want to attend a funeral for a talented, educated, physically disabled person, caused by suicide. It’s the hardest thing to witness, especially when it’s avoidable.
Don’t cut Medicaid – lives are at stake!
I don’t know enough about Scott Walker to venture a guess about how he’d react to someone whose life got so lousy they were driven to suicidal despair – at least partly due to Medicaid cuts planned.
I do know that other players will offer a different kind of “help” for those who find their lives to awful to bear with precious supports taken away from them.
Last week, for example, this blog highlighted New Hampshire legislator Steve Vaillancourt, a Tea Party/Libertarian Republican. Consistent with his view of the world, he has contempt for the “Nanny” government – we can guess that includes supports like Medicaid. We also know that his libertarian response to people who are suicidal is that the government should – intervene in those cases, to make sure that a botched suicide doesn’t cost the state more money.
If that seems harsh, we’ve seen it play out before. Disability activist and author Marta Russell wrote the following account in a scathing essay asking why “humanists” were so in love with Jack Kevorkian:
Is it humanistic to assist in the suicide of a disabled man who has been waiting for nine agonizing months for a wheelchair from his horrible HMO? That is what Kevorkian did to Matt Johnson. Matt’s wheelchair came the day after Kevorkian’s visit – one day too late to free him from his seemingly permanent bed-ridden state and the actual permanent state of death.
So be doubly concerned. Not only will cutting fragile supports drive more people into isolation and even to suicidal despair, but the ever-opportunistic groups like Final Exit Network will be sure to offer their own “help” for the coming crisis. They won’t offer help that people need to live better lives – they’ll just tell everyone what we (disabled people) really need is help to make it easier to commit suicide.
On another note, I’d planned on a different kind of entry today, but events demanded the two items that have been posted. Look for some long-ish pieces to go up tomorrow and Friday. –Stephen Drake
Edit: Forgot to give h/t to Lawrence Carter-Long.