[Editor’s Note: This is a reprint of a Press Release issued by the Center for Disability Rights, NDY’s close partner in Rochester, NY.]
The Center for Disability Rights has created a PSA to address disability and assisted suicide, one of the primary topics highlighted in the new romantic comedy, Me Before You. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Jojo Moyes, who also penned the screenplay. Me Before You tells the story of a cheerful underachiever, Louisa, who is hired as the Personal Care Attendant for a wealthy quadriplegic named Will Traynor. Louisa soon realizes her job is to convince Will to live, as he has an appointment at an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland in six months. Despite the two falling in love Will tells Louisa that love is not enough, and goes through with killing himself because of his disability.
The murder and killing of disabled people in Hollywood films is a common theme. Assisted suicide, in particular, can be seen in a number of films beyond Me Before You including Million Dollar Baby, The Sea Inside, and Whose Life is it Anyway? Assisted suicide is often presented as a logical ending to disabled lives. In these films, disabled people are seen as a burden, and are presented as suffering, so assisted suicide is seen as a reasonable and rational outcome.
In response to the controversy, disabled people around the world have been protesting the movie, both at the London and New York premieres, and during the June 3 opening weekend. As the film heads into its second week in over 2000 theaters across the U.S., activists have continued to try to counter the film through a series of informational events that are being held offline, as well as through social media.
The PSA, which has already garnered over 150,000 views on Facebook, was developed by the Center for Disability Rights with filmmaker Clark Matthews. It features real individuals with disabilities, as they counter the message presented in these harmful films. The PSA highlights that disabled lives are worth living, and that assisted suicide is harmful to the disability community. The idea behind the PSA is to flip the script, and change the story when it comes to disability. Since there are not many films that counter the message that disabled lives are not worth living, the PSA and worldwide protests of the film are attempting to educate the public about the truth about disability. Everyone, whether they have a disability or not, is encouraged to stop accepting such harmful portrayals of disability, by avoiding these movies. Instead, the message is to promote content by disabled creators, and encourage Hollywood to make films that show disabled people living life, something the over 1 billion people with disabilities around the world do, every single day.
Unfortunately, in our hedonistic and secular culture and law, the bottom line is money and the culture of death grows in the land of the free and the home of the brave as assisted suicide and medical futility and mandatory Medicare/Medicaid hospice (in the works) are employed under the ACA to shorten life and to save money for the private insurance companies who have invaded Medicare/Medicaid to make record profits on the stock market.
The rationale appears to be that if you are going to die anyway from a terminal disease, or a worsening disability, why not die sooner rather than later and save time and trouble and $$$$ for Big Insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, the family and the heirs?
It is time to read again the article “Involuntary Passive Euthanasia in the United States Courts ” by the esteemed Prof. Thaddeus Mason Pope to understand that the targeting of the elderly and the disabled and poor for savings in health care costs by hastening death is deliberate and facilitated by a court system that doesn’t intend to punish or deter passive euthanasia, i.e. the withholding or withdrawing of life-extending care that, by law, will not be reimbursed to the hospitals under Part A and Part C Medicare and
Medicare/Advantage Health Insurance and Medicaid Insurance. The lie of the “cause of death” becomes legal as the terminal disease or the precipitating hospital event is ALWAYS the legal cause of death on the death certificate.
Hollywood is the biggest brain-washing machine of all time. They always follow the money and “easy death” is easy to sell as the sanctity of life gives way to the sick sanctity of easy death.