Our disabled allies in the UK are currently experiencing – and fighting against – a potentially deadly assault on their lives and freedom. The UK Government proposes to severely cut the many parts of the social safety net that disabled people of all ages depend on to live – and many just barely managing on current supports. At the same time, the pro-euthanasia campaign seems to be increasing in power – both politically and in the media.
It sounds a little like the United States, doesn’t it?
Truthfully, people in the US who are old, ill, poor and/or disabled haven’t gotten to feel the full brunt of the budget axe yet, but we can see it coming. I reckon we’re a year or two at most until we’re really facing the realities of what are now merely threats (for the most part). And – especially after the non-stop eulogizing of Kevorkian over the past couple of weeks, we can certainly feel the sentiment in terms of legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide gaining ground. And it looks like there are more people who are willing to admit that they’re not just talking about the “terminally ill.” They even get kindly clueless Dr. Sanjay Gupta to give them the opportunity to proselytize to a national audience.
No two countries are alike, but nevertheless we should take what lessons we can from our brothers and sisters in the UK. They’re fighting battles that may be just as imminent for us within a very short time.
Last night the BBC aired a “documentary” by fantasy writer Terry Pratchett. Pratchett was diagnosed with a form of demential a couple of years ago. Since then, he’s used his popularity, wealth and influence to do everything he can to push legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia forward. As a rich disabled guy, this self-absorbed a-hole, Pratchett hasn’t, to my knowledge, said one word about the dismantling of the social safety net that other – less wealthy – disabled people are facing. In this latest BBC show, Pratchett showed a person at Dignitas taking a lethal drink and dying.
Enough from me.
On the blog Disabled People Fight Back, Miss Dennis Queen (aka Clair Lewis) put up two posts today in regard two posts outlining a disability response:
Challenging Pratchett & Designer Deaths: Assisted Suicide is deadly discrimination
Fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett has already written his life’s final chapter. For it to work, we’d need to destroy medical & human rights legislation and principles protecting sick & disabled people and our lives. Not only is this selfish and arrogant, but should he achieve his goal, many lives would be put at risk.
Terry Pratchett wants all sick & disabled people who are suffering to be given access to deathly medications – not all people who wish to end their lives – just us sick ones. This is a deadly form of discrimination.
Disability rights activists in the Disabled people’s movement such as D.A.N. and Not Dead Yet and the newer UK network of the same name have been fighting the flow of popular opinion on this for a very long time, but our voices are rarely included in the debate. At the very least there should be some balance in the debate.
In his position of privilege, can Terry even know or understand what difficulties most of us face, or why we face them? Is a newly disabled, well off, writer of fiction qualified to make such huge social decisions on our behalf? He is not suffering the neglect so many face, or the pressures to not be a burden. He is out of touch with the struggles of most people with serious impairments and illnesses. How can he know what is right for the rest of us?
Pratchett’s documentary tonight on BBC made a completely one-sided bid to show how wanted and ‘good’ death clinics are, despite it being common medical knowledge that most people in severe health situations want to be supported to live as long as we can.
Read the rest of the post here.
ACTION NOTICE: Fight BBC bias towards assisted suicide! Just takes 10 minutes
It’s time to complain to the BBC again and push for balance. Despite more than a year of us poking them, pointing out the one-sidedness of what they choose to air on voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, BBC are continuing to advance and weight debate about this life and death issue.This influences public opinion and is not a representation of the complex debates going on. People do have a right to choice and part of that is being given access to ALL the information.Last night’s documentary from Terry Pratchett about assisted suicide contained no detailed balancing view.
Debates afterards on Newsnight were weighted against the sole disability rights activist there (Liz Carr) and one religious representative.
BBC online news last night gave brief overview on
this matter:Ms Carr said: “I and many other disabled older and terminally ill people, are quite fearful of what legalising assisted suicide would do and mean and those arguments aren’t being debated, teased out, the safeguards aren’t being looked at.“Until we have a programme that does that, then I won’t be happy to move onto this wider debate.”
Read the rest of the post here, which includes a link to a BBC complaint form and a 5-step set of instructions to to ease the process.
And if you think it’s unfair or paranoid to link the economic crisis to the rise in pro-euthanasia propaganda, I’d advise people to go back and read this post, which highlighted the following quote from Hemlock Society Founder and Final Exit Network advisor Derek Humphry, writing with author Mary Clement in 2000:
“Similar to other social issues, the right-to-die movement has not arisen separate and distinct from other concurrent developments of our time. In attempting to answer the question Why Now?, one must look at the realities of the increasing cost of health care in an aging society, because in the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice. As technology advances, as medical costs skyrocket out of control, as chronic diseases predominate, as the projected rate of the eighty-five-and-older population accelerates, as managed care seeks to cut costs and as Medicare is predicted to go bankrupt by 2007, the impetus of cost containment provide impetus, whether openly acknowledged or not, for the practicalities of an assisted death.” (Emphasis added.)
–Stephen Drake
Cutbacks to the disabled as well as the elderly have already begun. My food stamps were cut several dollars this year while food costs continue to escalate and I just found out that even the empowerment center is changing back from taxi fare provided to help the disabled to bus tokens…even for those who have trouble making it to the bus stop to begin with. We would be better off giving less to other countries and taking care of our own people first – that’s CARE, not pushing passive euthanasia!
Victoria,
Of course they’ve begun – but that’s nothing compared to some of what could be headed our way. Foreign aid all by itself wouldn’t make up much more than a tiny fraction of the deficit and wouldn’t impact cuts in the social safety net.
What is needed is to take many steps. But that won’t happen. The oil companies will keep their billions in tax subsidies. The tax rates on the rich won’t rise. OTOH, poor and middle class people will see increased sales taxes, cut services, increased fees for licenses, admission to public facilities, etc.
Two Presidents and the Congress have engaged in two wars without paying for them. I don’t see the shared sacrifice – it seems that it’s all going to be borne by the poor and middle class.