Rhonda Wiebe is on the NDY Board of Directors. Yesterday, The B.C. Catholic published an essay by Rhonda titled “Are we better off dead than disabled?” Here’s the beginning of her excellent piece – a piece that aims to inform sympathetic but otherwise uninformed allies about the most critical barriers and threats facing disabled people:
The perils of the social devaluation of people include legal assisted suicide and euthanasia
By Rhonda Wiebe
The B.C. CatholicIt 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.
Please read the rest of her essay at the B.C. Catholic here. –Stephen Drake