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

Mike Huckabee Says Folks with Pre-Existing Conditions are Uninsurable, Just Like a Burnt-Out House

access to health care, Back Door Euthanasia, health care reform, Mike Huckabee, Our News & Commentary Blog, politics, Tea Party, Utilitarianism, Values Voters

Readers might have noticed that some other groups and individuals who oppose legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia spend a fair amount of time and energy warning about “pro-death” ideology on the left.  You don’t have to search very far to find warnings about “Obamacare,” impending rationing and “death panels.”

While a lot of the rhetoric about “death panels” and rationing are overblown, it’s obvious that many self-identified “progressives” can be very “pro-death” when it comes to disability.  What else explains the eager way in which the liberal Huffington Post, for example, has provided a home for the extreme (and often sloppy) polemics of self-described “bioethicist and medical historian” Jacob Appel, to offer up one example.

Where I – and other disability activists – part with politically Right-leaning opponents of assisted suicide is that we see cause for alarm on the Right as well.  A lot of radical conservative rhetoric right now – like from the Tea Party – sounds pretty pro-death if you’re a person with a disability, chronic condition, etc.

If that sounds extreme and alarmist (as opposed to the “death panel” cries), please watch the video embedded below.  It’s good old “Compassionate Conservative Christian Mike Huckabee” speaking at the “Values Voter Summit” – the site for the summit says the “values” they want to further are to: protect marriage, champion life, strengthen the military, limit government, control spending and defend our freedoms.  Guess which one of those “values” Huckabee throws under the bus?

Check it out – and for those who need captioning, I tried the automatic captioning on this video and it works well.  There are a couple of typos, but you get the full content of Huckabee’s remarks:

To summarize – Huckabee blasts the idea of requiring insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions.  He compares those individuals – which includes me and just about everyone I know and care about – to both a burnt-down house and a wrecked car.  And, of course, it would be ridiculous to expect an insurance company to insure a house that burned down yesterday.

This can be interpreted in no other way but as a blatantly utilitarian appeal to Tea Party folks who combine the scary traits of wanting as little government as possible, want to pay as little tax as possible, and resent “paying” for people on “entitlements.”

I guess they should amend that “Champion Life” to read “Champion the lives of young, healthy, nondisabled people.”

It’s a chilling message, given the context.  Huckabee objectifies people like me, my loved ones and friends by comparing us to burnt buildings reduced to ashes.

He says we’ll raise the cost of health care for everyone.  I’m guessing that he doesn’t want to expand government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, since the only “program” on the agenda that is targeted for increases in funding is Military Defense.  Does he think that emergency room use by uninsured people won’t continue to raise health care costs?

Radical libertarians would eliminate that practice and only grant medical treatment to the insured or those who can pay in some other way.  The rest of us can go find a publicly-owned bridge to crawl under and die quietly where we won’t bother anyone.

I’m sure Rev. Huckabee would be glad to pray for our souls, though, since that won’t cost him anything.

Well, speaking for myself, this burnt-out pile of ashes has a message for Huckabee and other “Values Voters” who agree with him.

I’ll take care of my own soul; making sure I can get affordable health coverage is what I’d like help with.

Mike Huckabee and anyone else who doesn’t like that can kiss my ash! –Stephen Drake

Scotland: Disability Community Protesting Assisted Suicide Bill

assisted suicide, disability activists, disability rights, discrimination, Margo MacDonald, Our News & Commentary Blog, Scotland, suicide

There’s an effort in Scotland right now that is spearheaded by Margo MacDonald. She’s been successful in getting the matter before the Scottish Parliament.  There has been an encouraging amount of opposition to the proposed bill from the medical community.  The disability community seems pretty united – and serious – about opposing this bill, which they think is badly timed, to say the least:

Members of Inclusion Scotland say Margo Macdonald’s End of Life Bill discriminates against disabled people and contradicts the independent living agenda. They were protesting as evidence about the bill was being heard inside the parliament.

Disability support worker Catherine Garrod said: “I think it is offering assisted suicide to disabled people but a non-disabled person who was suicidal would be given counselling.

Dr Colin Cameron, a disability equality trainer, added:: “We need to provide support for disabled people to live on their own terms, not providing support for them to die.”

More later on…

The bill would make it legal for doctors to assist those who wish to die. It is designed to help those with a terminal illness and those whose physical disability makes life intolerable.

The move has been proposed by Margo MacDonald – who herself suffers from Parkinsons disease.

She said: “The bill has nothing whatsoever to do with disabled people, and I think it is absolutely disgraceful that such vulnerable people should have been used here today.” (Emphasis added.)

The row came as MSPs took detailed evidence on the bill.

Pam Duncan, a board member of Inclusion Scotland, said; “I genuinely believe that as a parliament we have a responsibility to make life a better choice than death.”

MacDonald reveals a type of contemptuous dismissal common among pro-euthanasia advocates in her framing the people with disabilities who are protesting as people who “have been used.”  On the one hand, she wants to respect individual choice and autonomy – but when disabled people come together and turn collective “thumbs down” to her “dignity” bill, she labels them as puppets “being used” by others (although she doesn’t say who the puppeteers are in this article, anyway).

In other coverage, disability advocates and activists harshly criticize the timing of this bill:

Catherine Garrod, of Lothian Centre for Inclusive Living, claimed that under the bill only disabled people would be eligible for assistance to die, suggesting their lives were of less value than those of non-disabled people.

She cited the case of 23-year-old Daniel James, who chose to die after being paralysed while playing rugby and added: “His wish to die was considered to be acceptable because he was a disabled man. The same desire to die in a non-disabled person of either sex or any age would be considered to be unreasonable and a sign of mental illness.”
Ms Garrod also called for a greater emphasis on tackling the social hurdles which can make life difficult for disabled people. Inclusion Scotland has criticised the timing of the bill, arguing that cuts to benefits and services might put some people in even more desperate situations, and make assisted dying appear “attractive”. 
“There is no mention throughout the End of Life bill of the barriers facing disabled people that may contribute to them finding life intolerable,” Ms Garrod said. “Barriers such as cuts to welfare benefits, cuts to social work services and other types of support, cuts to health services and the lack of accessible housing and being in poverty can all make life intolerable for disabled people.”
She added: “Disabled people are among the most disempowered in our society. This limits their choices. Some disabled people don’t even get to choose their own socks.
“The so-called safeguards in the bill would not prevent insidious and sometimes even unconscious pressure being brought to bear on disabled people by carers, health and care professionals. All research studies conducted on assisted dying show ‘not wanting to be a burden’ as the principal reason for seeking death.”

I invite Margo MacDonald to educate me.  Who, pray tell, is “using” Catherine Garrod?  She seems pretty clear on what she wants and why.  If you can’t name someone who is “using” Garrod, you should consider apologizing to her and to all disabled people in Scotland.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that apology or advise anyone else to, either. –Stephen Drake

Washington State: Grieving Relative Compares Legally Scheduled Suicide to Execution

assisted suicide, Conflation and Con jobs, executions, media coverage, Our News & Commentary Blog, reality check, safeguards, suicide, Washington state

To be honest, the letter from Katie Densley in the Spokesman-Review on Sunday didn’t surprise me at all.  That is, the content of the letter didn’t surprise me.  The fact that her letter was published did surprise me.  I suspect there are more stories like hers in Washington – and even more in Oregon.  But they don’t have the well-funded Public Relations department of C & C (Conflation & Con Jobs) working to get those stories to the public by way of the media.

Here’s the beginning of Densley’s letter, titled “Suicide Like Execution“:

It’s been a year since my uncle opted for assisted suicide. To me it’s an excruciating anniversary. He talked about this for a year before it became law. He’d had surgery for cancer which left him with a catheter. He was depressed at 94 but was home with assistance from friends and health givers. I thought this could never happen because he was just old and depressed.

When the law became reality, friends helped him with his quest. They took him to doctors that my uncle convinced this was what he wanted. His profession had been car salesman so he got the doctors to sign off on him. Friends who were his caretakers tried to talk him out of it, saying it wasn’t right because he wasn’t terminal.

The date was set for the final event. I loved him and wanted to be with him when he died. It felt like an execution.

And the execution went ahead as scheduled.  Not terminal, but able to talk doctors into giving him a lethal prescription.  Friends who didn’t like it, but just went along with it.

In case you’re wondering, there’s nothing that this niece could do in terms of complaining about the doctor who gave a prescription to someone who wasn’t terminally ill.  Unlike the “safeguards” that allegedly restrict assisted suicide to the “terminally ill,” the physicians in question are protected against any sanctions as long as they acted “in good faith.”

What that means is that even if the physician violates any of the guidelines, they are protected from professional sanction, along with civil and criminal liability.  All a physician needs to do is stick to the claim that they believed they were acting in accordance with the law.  It would take something like a public email from the physician admitting they knew they were breaking the law to pierce the “good faith” liability armor.

Please go and read the rest of the letter and check out the comments.  Right now, there aren’t many  – just 2 at last count.  That says something.  What also indicates something about the Washington public is that both commentators ignore Densley’s assertion that her uncle wasn’t terminally ill.  Ignoring that piece of her message makes it easier for them to urge her to respect her uncle’s values and get over it. 

Why fuss over details?  They just get in the way when you want to parrot platitudes about “death with dignity.”

–Stephen Drake