Laura Hershey : 1962-2010

activism, advocacy, in memorium, Laura Hershey, Our News & Commentary Blog, Robin Stephens

 (The picture above is a head shot portrait of Laura Hershey)

Many regular readers and (and hopefully all of the members of the disability community) who read this blog will recognize the name of Laura Hershey.

Laura – a poet, activist, writer, consultant – died unexpectedly on November 26th after a sudden illness.  She was 48 years old.  As an activist and writer, Laura leaves behind an immense body of works – her writings deal with disability rights, oppression, women’s rights, worker’s rights, oppression, and resistance.  This is not an exhaustive list of topics – Laura would write about how these concerns intersected – and was passionately dedicated to the promotion of human rights and social justice for all individuals.  Reading news she would share on Facebook made it clear to me that she followed many global social justice concerns that mostly remain off my own radar, finding the array of issues I do track being about as much as I can handle.

Over the years, Laura engaged in advocacy on NDY issues, taking part in and/or organizing local events touching on NDY issues – or I should say she co-organized them, since organizing a local event was just about always a joint effort of Laura and her long-time partner, Robin Stephens.  (Laura and Robin celebrated their 20th anniversary of being together last year.)

Since the beginning of NDY, Laura served on our board of directors, several times as one of the officers.

Here are links to a few of the NDY-related pieces she wrote over the years:

You can find much more about Laura and her work at the memorial site that has been set up for friends and admirers to share thoughts and memories with others: Celebrating the Life of Laura Hershey

NDY’s founder – Diane Coleman – has known Laura for a long time, both being “regulars” in ADAPT.  I first met Laura in 1998, when Diane and I both stayed with Laura and Robin in their house in Denver.  During that visit, a bunch of us found time to visit the headquarters of the Hemlock Society, where we made a lasting impression. 

(photo above consists of two head portraits, with Laura Hershey on the left and Robin Stephens on the right)

In addition to being the activist, writer, and intellectual, Laura was a lover and a mother.  As I mentioned earlier, she and Robin Stephens recently celebrated 20 years together.

 (photo above is – from left to right – group shot of Laura Hershey, Shannon Hershey-Stephens and Robin Stephens)

Early last summer, Laura and Robin adopted a daughter.  Shannon Hershey-Stephens had already been with them for about a year at that time.  I want to say that since the time that Shannon entered their lives, I’ve taken great pleasure as both Robin and Laura have shared the latest news of adventures (and occasional misadventures) of this new family.  It was clear how much joy all of them have given to each other and those around them.

Laura’s death is one more surprising and saddening loss in our community this year.  Mostly I find myself thinking of Robin and Shannon – and the rest of the extended family around them.  I know how saddened we all are by Laura’s death. 

Our thoughts are with Robin and Shannon.  Hoping you take joy and comfort from your memories – and the same from the friends and family who share your loss.  Peace.

C & C Attorney Kathryn Tucker to Pitch Legalized Assisted Suicide at Conference on Abuse of Elderly and Disabled?

abuse, Compassion & Choices, conferences, Conflation and Con jobs, Homicide / 'Mercy Killing', NAPSA, national adult protective services association, Our News & Commentary Blog

Recently, we became aware of a very disturbing development.

Every year, the National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) hosts a conference on abuse of the elderly and people with disabilities, sharing research and prevention strategies.  The 2010 conference is being held next week in San Diego, California.

The conference sessions and workshops are a reflection of the organization itself, as stated on the front page of the website:

The National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) is a national non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization with members in all fifty states, including the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. It was formed in 1989 to provide state Adult Protective Services (APS) program administrators and staff with a forum for sharing information, solving problems, and improving the quality of services for victims of elder and vulnerable adult abuse.

And for the most part, that is what you see in the program for the 2010 conference (pdf).

There is one glaring exception.  On November 9, the second day of the conference, a concurrent presentation is being given by “Compassion & Choices” attorney Kathryn Tucker.  (Most often, this organization is referred to as “Conflation & Con Jobs” here.)

Tucker’s presentation is titled “Abuse in Terminally Ill Patients: Failures of Care.”  However abuse is defined by Tucker, it’s an easy bet that a large part of her “solution” will entail legalization of assisted suicide.  Tucker and her allies in the euthanasia movement are predictable and zealous – just as radical conservatives offer “tax cuts” as the solution to most problems, Tucker and her organization offer legalized assisted suicide as their own panacea of choice.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of being alarmed at seeing Tucker getting a podium at this conference.  Over the past year, Tucker and C & C have been busy exploiting tragic cases in which elderly men murder their wives and then commit suicide themselves.  In all of these cases, there has been no evidence that the murder victim had agreed to or wished for her own death.  In more than one case, the woman murdered wasn’t terminally ill.

Nevertheless, C & C has exploited these tragedies using two deceptive tactics in statements to the press: 1.) they imply the deaths were mutually planned and consensual when there is no evidence of that claim; 2.) they refer to the nonterminal conditions of the murdered women as “terminal;” 3.) the punchline is, of course, that they make an absurd claim that legalization of assisted suicide would somehow have prevented the tragedy.

Of course, it’s absurd to think that a man who would kill a wife who didn’t want to die would reach out to his doctor just because assisted suicide was legal.  It would still be illegal for him to ask for help in killing a wife who wanted to live, wouldn’t it?

In order to make the argument at all plausible, you have to significantly distort the facts.  Tucker and her employers have shown no hesitation in this regard.

For a detailed analysis of two instances of this brand of warped advocacy, please check out the following two blog entries:

 I would like to know what the organizers of this conference were thinking in accepting this proposal.  Tucker gives presentations with only one goal in mind – advancing the main mission of legalizing assisted suicide.

Will attendees notice that she’s using a different definition of “terminal” than they’re used to? Or will they note that her biggest problem with these murder/suicides is that they are “violent” and messy?  She doesn’t mention the nonconsensual part.

Her participation in this conference is offensive and dangerous to the lives of people the organization involved is devoted to protecting.  Tucker’s solution to the ultimate form of abuse – murder – is to redefine it as something else so she and C & C can use these murders to help their own agenda.

I can only think that her inclusion happened through gross ignorance on the part of the organizers.  That’s bad enough.  I’d hate to think that they actually knew what the organization has been doing over the past year.  That would mean that vulnerable elderly women are in more danger now than ever.  –Stephen Drake

Rock Band “Killing Joke” Says “No joke – they worked to get friend to delay suicide by ordering more work”

John Hicklenton, Killing Joke, Our News & Commentary Blog, suicide, suicide prevention, Switzerland

Last March, artist John Hicklenton, who had multiple sclerosis, killed himself at the Dignitas “clinic” in Switzerland.  It was clear at the time that many people who knew him were aware of his plans and just quietly accepted his decision.

It turns out that not everyone who knew Hicklenton just blandly accepted his wish to kill himself, according to an interview with Jaz Coleman – frontman for the band Killing Joke.  From Rockradio in the UK:

Killing Joke were so upset that artist John Hicklenton was planning to kill himself that the band kept commissioning more work from him to postpone his final act.

Hicklenton, known for his work on cult comic 2000AD, ended his life in March this year after a battle against multiple sclerosis. He was 42 when he entered the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland for an assisted suicide.

Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman believes many people will find it hard to understand how his band feel about what many people see as the ultimate human right.

Coleman tells The Quietus: “There’s a lot of death around these days. We had two fatalities while we were recording the new album: bass player Youth’s father, and Johnny.

“He’s the guy from 2000AD who got all our stuff to Heath Ledger. Johnny was dying from MS. We kept commissioning him so we could put back the date.

“I suppose it would be a problem for a lot of people to realise that suicide, on any level, doesn’t sit well with any of us in Killing Joke. Not even Dignitas.

“I had my friend who was committing suicide at Dignitas. He said to me, ‘There’s a woman in this room – she says I’ve got to be dead by two o’clock’.”

For those who think there’s anything “dignified” about Dignitas, read that last line again.  Hicklenton had to cut his call short in order to hurry up, kill himself, and allow the staff to make the room available to the next beneficiary of the organization’s brand of “death with dignity.”

It’s stunning reading this that Coleman feels he has to explain why he and other band members went to some effort to get their friend to put off his suicide.  Like he has to defend giving the man reasons to live a while longer.  He didn’t use coercion, or call in the mental health police.  He just gave him more work that – obviously – could only be done if he was living.

Even then, Coleman says that some people might not understand – and I’m afraid he’s probably right.

But I hope he knows that some people do understand – and are grateful for his efforts – and taking time to say that suicide isn’t really that great a thing.  –Stephen Drake

Disabled Feminists Issue Statement: on Robert Edwards, Virginia Ironside and Unnecessary Opposition of Rights

clair lewis, disability activists, disability rights, eugenics, feminism, Laura Hershey, Our News & Commentary Blog, UK

It surprises some people when they inquire about NDY that we don’t describe ourselves as “prolife.”  The reason we don’t describe ourselves that was is that “prolife” tends to cover a variety of positions, but first and foremost is the opposition to abortion.  NDY, as an organization, doesn’t oppose abortion.  We have no organizational position on abortion or any prebirth issues at all.

When it comes to the disability activist community, most in the US would describe themselves as “prochoice” on abortion, but also have concerns about cultural messages that convey the message that reducing the number of disabled infants born into the world is a laudable outcome of the increasing use of prenatal screening techniques.

NDY keeps these issues separate – we have our hands full with threats to the lives of people with disabilities after we’re born.

Once in awhile, some story or article ties the two issues together, and we get a lot of pointers to the item, with suggestions we say or do something about it.

One of those occasions occurred almost three weeks ago, when columnist Virginia Ironside was interviewed on a BBC show.  Beginning with an assertion that the termination of a pregnancy to avoid the birth of a disabled child was a “selfless” act, she went on to talk about her willingness to smother any suffering infant or child.

Clair Lewis, a disability activist in the UK, participated as a call-in on the show and she wrote about it at the blog Heresy Corner:

It is fascism masquerading as equality politics when we try to pass off disability discrimination and prejudice like this as feminism. The welfare of women and disabled people are not opposed and this is not a competition for a limited quantity of equality and rights. It is misuse of the platform of women’s rights and insulting to twist debates about our right to choose whether to be pregnant, or not, into opportunities to peddle a moral obligation to kill disabled infants. It is a distortion and conflation of two separate issues.

In the following week, I discussed this issue with some disability activists in the US.  In the course of those discussions, I found that a group of women active in disability rights and reproductive rights were working on a statement, which would also cover concerns over issues that went virtually unmentioned in the news coverage of the Nobel Prize awarded to Robert Edwards, who pioneered in vitro fertilization.

Here is an excerpt from the letter/call to action on the Generations Ahead website.  It’s titled Robert Edwards, Virginia Ironside, and the Unnecessary Opposition of Rights.  Here is an excerpt:

As people committed to both disability rights and reproductive rights, we believe that respecting women and families in their reproductive decisions requires simultaneously challenging discriminatory attitudes toward people with disabilities. We refuse to accept the bifurcation of women’s rights from disability rights, or the belief that protecting reproductive rights requires accepting ableist assumptions about the supposed tragedy of disability. On the contrary, we assert that reproductive rights includes attention to disability rights, and that disability rights requires attention to human rights, including reproductive rights.

We offer the following statement in response to two recent events that promote eugenic reproductive decision-making, and that further stigmatize disabled people by presenting disability exclusively in terms of suffering and hardship. Although seemingly disparate events, they share the presumption that disability renders a life not worth living and that people with disabilities are a burden on society. Moreover, they seem to imply that the only appropriate response to disability is elimination, thereby limiting women’s reproductive choices; they suggest that all women must either abort fetuses with disabilities or use IVF to de-select for disability.

Please read the whole statement – and you can sign on to it if you agree with it.

Thanks to Laura Hershey for her work on this statement and alerting me to it.  –Stephen Drake

Connecting Disability Rights and Animal Rights – A Really Bad Idea

animal rights, autism, critical animal studies, disability rights, euthanasia, Our News & Commentary Blog, PETA, Peter Singer, pets

Is there something in the air?  Earlier this year, a friend and former colleague introduced me to someone on Facebook – an amazing guy who has what looks like a bottomless well of energy and passion, judging from the status messages I see and the info on his info page.

Sometime after I posted this entry about the economic considerations that dominate decisions about whether to get medical treatment or euthanasia for a pet, I was drawn into a discussion with these two about linking animal rights with disability rights.  The concept wasn’t new to me, as I have had a couple of individuals who are both disability rights activists and animal rights activists make a similar case to me.  The idea is that both animals and people with disabilities share common ground in terms of mistreatment, devaluing, and other forms of oppression.

My reaction then was the same as it always has been – I do not see any upside to linking disability rights issues to animal rights issues.  At least, I don’t really see the upside for people with disabilities.

I’ve been checking around and it looks like – in some animal rights circles and in some academic circles – this argument is being pursued, although I don’t think anyone’s floated a trial balloon at, say, a national meeting of ADAPT.

Anyway, the conversation with the friends on Facebook led to a discussion of a possible inclusion of me articulating my objections in a proposed volume on Critical Animal Studies.  That fell through – due entirely to my failure to follow through on any of the necessary steps needed to prepare for inclusion in any kind of project like that.  My plate tends to be pretty full and once in awhile I get foolish enough to think I can add more to it.  The big problem, of course, is that I don’t always inform people that my plate was fuller than I thought – and I just drop communication.

All this was a few months ago.  The reason I am writing today is that a few people on Facebook have shared and applauded an article they’ve linked on the site – one that makes the case that “choosing between the rights of nonhuman animals and the rights of people with disabilities is a false dichotomy.”

The article in question, Animal rights and autism pride: Let’s heal the rift, is written by Daniel Salomon, appears in The Scavenger.  The article here is a shortened version that appeared early this year in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies.  While Mr. Salomon is making a case for linking the Autism Pride movement specifically here, it’s obvious he’s making a case for disability rights in general.

The article opens with this:

Peter Singer and other activist-scholars have established the philosophical legitimacy of discourse regarding animal ethics; thus, animal ethics can no longer be dismissed as sentimentalism by the Western intellectual establishment.

It’s a bad sign when an article that looks like it’s intended to make a pitch to disability rights activists opens by acknowledging the role of Peter Singer in legitimizing animal ethics. (Note – the second link on Peter Singer’s name is to a recent protest letter endorsed by multiple disability organizations – the link in the article excerpt is to a wikipedia entry.)

You can read Salomon’s article yourself, but his main message is contained here:

I propose a variation of the linked oppression model, namely that there is a correlation between how autists are treated by neurotypical society and how neurotypical society, as a whole, treats nonhuman animals, and that the causes of autist pride and animal liberation are intricately linked, interdependent on one another.

Both oppressions have the same primary cause: the ideology of neurotypicalism. When those without a fully functioning vermis, including autists and nonhuman animals, do not conform to the wishes of neurotypical society, neurotypical society starts to interfere with, censor, and control those understandings or behaviors which do not conform to neurotypical standards or desires.

This model is consistent with reality and it helps resolve the conflict between animal rights and disability rights which is manifested in some religious, ethical, and public policy debates.

Again, the emphasis here is on autism, but at least some of the arguments are aimed at a broader linking between disability rights and animal rights.

What’s wrong with that?

 On one level, it could be appealing.  A glance at progressive sites such as Change.org or even the progressive publication shows that there are is space, acknowledgment and energy given to all varieties of human rights issues – and animal rights issues, but disability rights is absent as a cause or concern.  Who wouldn’t want to grab onto those coattails?

Me, for one.

See, one thing that Salomon and others dance around is that if there is a “schism” between animal rights and disability rights, it’s mostly been caused on one side.

  • Glossed over in the article, the “father of animal liberation,” Peter Singer, is an advocate of public policies that would legalize the killing of disabled infants and people of any age who don’t meet his own criteria for personhood.  In a recent NY Times essay, he advocated a rationale for limiting the amount of healthcare given to people with significant disabilities relative to nondisabled persons.  This same person was honored and one of the first inductees in the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame.  In fact, the year that Peter Singer was honored, one session included a discussion of when killing is OK, with “defective” human newborns on the list for discussion.
  • People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), arguably the most prominent animal rights organization in existence, has used ableism and other offensive tactics, in its media outreach.  This article gives a pretty good overview.

OK – so all I listed was two general issues, and even though most people can probably see that the Singer issue is a big one, a lot of people might think that shouldn’t be an insurmountable barrier in and of itself.  I don’t know if that’s true or not, because there are plenty of other reasons for the disability community to steer away from equating our situations and struggle for rights with those of animals.

First, animal rights advocacy is a cause that operates by defining and advocating for a set of principles which should govern human-animal interaction.  It is not the animals themselves demanding this.  That doesn’t mean the advocacy is meaningless, but animal rights advocates and activists can define the terms of rights advocacy for animals and never have to worry about the animals telling them they got it all wrong or that they want to speak for themselves now – which has happened to Jerry Lewis and Autism Speaks, to name two prominent organizations that have found that some people they advocated for don’t agree at all with the agenda they’ve set.  So the most obvious connection between animal rights advocacy and disability rights falls in the area of people with significant cognitive disabilities.

That brings me to the second concern.  Aside from Peter Singer, there is a scary amount of support in our society for killing old, ill and disabled people – especially when significant cognitive disability is involved.  Often such killing is justified by making comparisons between the killing of old, ill and disabled people and the comfortable myths we have about the euthanasia of pets (namely, the myth that all or most pets are killed because they are dying and in unrelievable suffering).  When disabled people are equated with animals, it never works out well for us.

Think I am making too much of this?  PETA, which I mentioned previously, has been criticized because the organization kills most of the animals it takes in at its shelters.  Here is how Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA explains the high kill rate at their shelters:

Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called “pets,” as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone’s, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.

Translate that line of reasoning to humans with significant intellectual disabilities and it begins to resemble – and even outstrip – Peter Singer’s suggestions for when it’s OK to kill humans.  As Newkirk explains in this essay, much of what they see in animals is the result of irresponsible human behavior.  That irresponsible behavior has led to a drastic overpopulation problem with cats and dogs.  The failure of people to spay and neuter has compounded the problem.  So what they are doing may sound bad, but is understandable on some level.

But the animal with the biggest overpopulation and resource-eating problem is the human species.  Singer’s policy proposals become highly defensible when oppressed, stigmatized, abused and neglected people with intellectual disabilities are situated similarly to our animal cousins.

At the very least, it’s too irrational to expect people who make up the ranks of disability activists to want to build serious bridges with the animal rights community.  I can’t see us joining hands with a group that holds Peter Singer in such high esteem and at best expressing “regret” for his writings on disability.

Maybe it’s just that the animal rights community – or parts of it, anyway, finds it easier to forgive some things and to even find them praiseworthy – even if those things seem shockingly antithetical to your cause in the view of others.  That would explain why PETA gave Temple Grandin an award for her work in designing more humane and efficient slaughterhouses. 

Personally, I give Grandin credit for her work.  But I don’t think I would be a big fan if I was against killing animals for meat.  Just like I don’t think that Amnesty International would honor some warlord who made it a point to commit genocide in a humane manner.  It doesn’t compute.

And the idea that disability rights and animal liberation are interconnected?  That doesn’t compute, either.  –Stephen Drake