Good Anti Assisted Suicide Column by Disability Rights Activists
Next year, Washington voters may decide whether to legalize assisted suicide. Already, the argument has begun. Here's a good piece published in the Olympian by Joelle Brouner, a member of paper's Diversity Panel and a disability rights activist, arguing why voters should reject legalization--as they did in 1991. Here is a powerful paragraph that nails its target:Physician-assisted suicide is less about choice or pain management than power. If legalized, physician-assisted suicide will inevitably align the power of the state, big money interests and a broken medical system. If the state sanctions the participation of medical professionals in the killing of patients, the matter transcends the individual who dies. We cannot divorce ourselves from policy decisions made in our name. As citizens, we would all be complicit, by extension, in these deliberate deaths.
Read the whole thing. It is an excellent example of how disability rights activists are making the difference in the assisted suicide debate.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:25 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
It's normal upon first learning of a disability to go through a major depressive episode. Joni Earekson, the quadriplegic activist, begged her sister to kill her when she first was injured. Joni is now grateful that her sister withstood her pleading and tears during that early crisis.
Approving assisted suicide would be throwing people like Joni under the bus. "Let them die, and decrease the surplus population."
I blame the Protestant work ethic - if you're not producing or working hard then you're a burden on your society and God will only give temporal wealth and benefits to those who are hard workers. That in itself is okay, as all people want to do meaningful work in their lives, but the idea of a merciful God who boosts you up later if you truely repent your sins didn't carry over with it, so you have a culture that values your output abilities and doesn't remind you that you have a responsibility to your neighbors who can't work for whatever reason.
And no, this isn't a bash against Protestnatism, it's pointing out that separated from the religious setting that also calls for cutting your neighbors some slack, the work ethic becomes an unreasonable monster. A false god, if you will, to the Christian religious.
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