Not Dead Yet UK Launches “The Resistance Campaign”

(The picture at the right is of disability activists in the UK. Most in the picture are using wheelchairs.  Several are holding signs.  There are two signs that can be read.  One says “You cut our money – you cut our lifeline;” and the other says “Increased poverty/Increased disability”).

Not Dead Yet UK has launched “The Resistance Campaign,” urging all Members of Parliament (MPs) to sign on to the ‘Resistance’ Charter 2010 – protecting the lives of disabled and terminally ill people.

Key points from the charter:

· A recognition that disabled and terminally ill people should have the same legal protection as everyone else
· A commitment to support disabled and terminally ill constituents to access the health, social and other services that they need
· A commitment to oppose any change to the current law, which makes assisted suicide illegal.

 The campaign has gotten coverage on the BBC, The Guardian, and Public Service.

Here’s an excerpt from Jane Campbell’s column about the campaign in The Guardian:

Disabled and terminally ill people have had to deal with fear, prejudice and discrimination since the beginning of time. Our lives have been devalued by statements such as “he/she’d be better off dead”. In recent years, calls for a change to the law prohibiting assisted suicide have grown louder and more frequent. They capitalise on fear. Fear of pain, fear of loss of dignity, fear of being a burden. And, yes, fear of witnessing those fears being felt by those we know and love. The solution offered to the fear of disability and illness is final: suicide.

Yet suicide is not well thought of in our society. It is “committed” by the mentally ill and those unable to face the future. In both cases, society does all that it can to prevent suicidal thoughts being enacted. Life is too precious to be solely entrusted to individual action. That society is willing to protect us, even from ourselves in times of personal crisis, defines our – and its – humanity.

However, those seeking a change to the law on assisted suicide say such ideals have no place when considering severely disabled and terminally ill people. Such lives, it seems, are not so precious: ending them prematurely should be a matter of individual choice. Perversely, if you can take your own life without assistance, society generally strives to protect you; but, if assistance to die is needed, they argue, it should be provided. The option to choose the time of one’s death is to be reserved for those for whom assistance is required.

No equality there. Yet many see this as irrefutably logical and compassionate.

We here in the US applaud our brothers and sisters in the UK for continuing to present a powerful resistance to policies that endorse the ideas that disabled people are better off dead, as good as dead – and cheaper if we’re dead. –Stephen Drake