October 4, 2004
FITNESS (via Mike Daley):
Where does John Kerry stand on our right to remain alive? (Lucy Gwin, Ragged Edge)
Give me ten minutes alone with the Democratic candidate and I'd pop the question: Does he support the right of disabled people to remain among the living?I'd appeal to his grand ambition. Mr. Senator, I'd say, even Chicago Democrats no longer vote from the grave. So the forty million disabled people of voting age can't elect you President if the Right to Die gets to us first.
The single disability rights issue on the liberal agenda is our Right to Die. That's nowhere near the top of the disability-rights-needed-here list. What do we want? We want what you've got: the freedom to run around loose, alive and kicking.
Trouble is, our strange bedfellows in this fight to remain alive are Jeb Bush, George W., John Ashcroft, the Pope, and the National Right To Life Committee.
Strange? Where would you expect to find people who believe in the dignity of every person? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 4, 2004 11:21 PM
Lucy Gwin is hysterical.
"[F]orty million disabled people" is typical interest-group inflation, i.e., a lie.
It includes everyone from quadrapalegics to people who need a cane. Hardly a cohesive group, much less one whose every member is about to kill themselves.
Secondly, how many people who are so far gone that they want to end it all would be voting anyhow ?
There isn't a big overlap between people with horrible quality of lives, and voters.
If these forty million disabled people are looking to buy the farm, don't expect a big turnout on election day.
If, however, Ms Gwin's point is that all of these people want to live, why would any right to kill oneself matter ?
I could kill myself right now, yet I don't, and not because it's illegal. If it were legal, I'd still refrain.
Michael -- It's not the right to kill oneself that they are worried about. It is the right to decide for others whether they should die.
Posted by: David Cohen at October 5, 2004 7:28 AMDavid:
If one is lucid enough to be able to vote, as Ms Gwin is postulating, then one need not worry about getting terminated.
The only question that remains is, will one be allowed, while one still has a voice, to plan for a time when one might not ?
Michael:
You can't. The life you find intolerable when healthy, simply because you're bigotted towards the ill, you'll fight for once its yours--except for those times when you're depressed, and incompetent to make the decision.
Posted by: oj at October 5, 2004 8:44 AMNo, I wouldn't fight, since I'd be in a coma.
That's the point.
The disabled-but-mobile can take care of killing themselves.
The comatose need a hand.
Yes, the murderer must see himself as humanitarian--that's how we started the Holocaust too--it was for the retards own good, not ours.
Posted by: oj at October 5, 2004 4:43 PM