Disability Concerns – Care Not Killing

Disability Concerns

Key Points

Read Next:

What’s Wrong with Legalising assisted suicide?

Leading disability rights campaigners – Tanni Grey-Thompson and Liz Carr – echo these concerns about pressure

When people with a disabilty get a terminal illness, they will feel disproportionately under more pressure to have an assisted suicide.

In one sense, they face the same pressures as everyone else.

But they have to contend with them at a more profound and intensified level due to their unique circumstances.

But they also face additional pressures that the rest of us don’t.

Demoralisation is a bigger problem. Internal feelings of burden or guilt mean that many are more prone to feel the need to justify their existence in a way that able bodied people simply do not feel.

Too many disabled people are used to having their lives judged as not worth living.

Their lives are often harder than they should be, because of inadequate services, benefit challenges and ableist prejudice in society.

Tanni Grey-Thompson has lost count of the number of times she’s been told, “If my life was like yours I would kill myself.”

As Liz Carr points out in her BBC documentary, “Many of us feel that assisted suicide creates a two tier system; suicide prevention for some, suicide approval for others.”

Many disabled people and organisations are deeply concerned they’ll be offered assisted suicide without asking for it.

Here are some examples from Canada that show how ableist attitudes and disdain for disability can lead healthcare professionals to make unprompted and inappropriate suggestions.

HEATHER HANCOCK

Heather is a 56-year-old Canadian woman with Spastic Cerebral Palsy.

During one hospital stay for treatment for muscular spasms, a nurse said to her, “You should do the right thing and consider MAiD. You’re being selfish. If I were you, I would take it in a heartbeat. You’re not living, you’re existing!”

CHRISTINE GAUTHIER

Retired Canadian soldier and Paralympic athlete Christine suffers with PTSD. She had been trying to get a wheelchair ramp installed in her home for five years.

After hearing her describe her deteriorating condition, a Veterans Affairs worker told her, “Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you Medical Assistance in Dying now.”

ROGER FOLEY

47-year-old Roger suffers from cerebellar ataxia, a disease that attacks the brain and muscles and has been bedridden for around eight years.

He secretly recorded a conversation with staff at a London, Ontario hospital, where he was told that keeping him alive would cost “north of $1500 a day” and had he considered MAiD?

Liz Carr’s “Better Off Dead?” documentary is a must watch if you want to understand why so many people with disabilities are so concerned.

Read Next: