Bad Cripple – Assisted Suicide: No Assistance Wanted

On March 21st, the Monterey County Herald published an op-ed by Neil Shapiro, which was, until the last paragraph, a fairly unremarkable and unoriginal promotion of legalized assisted suicide.  The author praised Jack Kevorkian and the states of Oregon and Washington – the two states that have legalized physician-prescribed suicide for people believed to have less than six months to live.

In fact, reading through the bulk of the article, I was hard put to understand the justification for the title given the piece from some newspaper staffer – “Right to die gives dignity to disabled.” 

Shapiro didn’t mention that most of Kevorkian’s body count consisted of people with disabilities or nonterminal chronic conditions, so that wouldn’t account for the title.  The statutes in Oregon and Washington claim to limit “eligibility” to “terminally ill” individuals.  So why was the title referring to “disabled” people?

The rationale for the title only became clear when I got to the last paragraph, which reads as a gratuitous jab at California disability rights activists who have been very helpful in fighting legalization efforts in that state.

Here is the closing paragraph from Shapiro’s suicide promotion piece:

There is a great irony in all of this. Those who are not incapacitated are physically able to commit suicide, and need no assistance. Those who require, but are routinely denied, that assistance are the disabled. We spend billions of dollars making sure that they have the same right as the rest of us to shop, visit the beach and the like, but we deny them the right to die with dignity. Go figure.

There is so much venom, privilege and bigotry in this one statement, I would hardly know where to begin.  Fortunately, Bill Peace at Bad Cripple took this piece of crap apart in his blog response, Assisted Suicide: No Assistance Wanted.

Here is an excerpt:

Where do I begin? If it were up to my neighbors as Shapiro puts it, I would have been denied an education. I would not be able to get on a bus or plane. I would not have a job or be father. We people with a disability had to fight for these fundamental rights. Even though we people with a disability are supposedly equal I have never felt that way—ever. The idea of equality for people with a disability is illusive at best. As for the billions of dollars spent on access, which Shapiro seems to resent, has saved countless lives, mine included. But just because we spend money on access and inclusion does not mean we value the people who are supposedly equal and included. When it comes to disability rights, as a society we merely pay lip service to these inherent civil rights most take for granted. We do not in reality accept the presence of people with a disability.

 There’s more – please read the rest here.

I have nothing to add but my thanks to Bill for writing this.  –Stephen Drake