As vets, we are involved in vet circles where we know a lot of disabled war veterans, some with horrible disabilities, who are valued members of our community.

Where I live, some high school students started a project to build homes for a local wounded warrior and his caregivers. On his 21st birthday his tank hit an IED in Iraq. He was trapped in the burning tank for 45 minutes before help arrived--and when they went to pull him out, his arm came off. He also had extensive burn injuries and is paralyzed from the chest down.

His kids, and our community, are glad he survived. The homes are being finished now, and even Gary Sinise and his foundation stepped up to support our vet. I don't know, but I hope no ignorant fuck ever told him he'd be better off dead. This vet has thousands of supporters who would disagree. Just google Jerral Hancock to see...

Your work is much valued. To me you typify what progressives do, every day!

And also so many ways for each of us to look at being disabled. And I guess that we look at death that way also.

I do think that most of us cling to live as long as it is bearable. And that also is an individual decision.

He was a hi-school classmate friend, although not close friend, that was paralyzed in a fraternity outing to the beach when he dove onto a hidden rock. He was quite outgoing and had everything going for him but I guess after 5 yrs and losing his girlfriend and most fiends decided to end it. Quite sad.

I can't speak for anyone but myself on this subject; it is an intensely personal one for every individual. But I will say I wish this country (and all others) had top-shelf free healthcare, mental healthcare, and independent living support for everyone who needs it, so that life was the choice we all would make.

I'm very, very sorry about your friend.

Last edited Mon Mar 23, 2015, 06:24 PM - Edit history (1)

The article in the OP wasn't really about living with chronic disability -- it was a disabled person's argument against assisted suicide laws.

But assisted suicide laws are for sick people who are DYING, not disabled people. And even then, they're not easy to take advantage of.

We had a relative in her nineties who was in her last weeks of cancer. She wanted to just get it over with, but couldn't find the two doctors the law required to assist her. So she had no choice but to continue with hospice for another month as she suffered through a long, drawn-out death.

And we have an assisted suicide law in my state. If anyone should be able to take advantage of it, it would be a competent person actively dying of a painful disease in her nineties.

So I don't appreciate the writer of the original article for confusing the issue by comparing the situation with that of non-dying people with disabilities.

so as not to let that neverending flamefest consume a discussion about ableism.

But you always write such thoughtful posts, so hang in there. I am a big proponent of assisted suicide, with all due precautions built-in. The important thing is not to impose our feelings and judgment on the lives of others.

else -- assisted suicide.

The astute reader wouldn't be able to know whether you left out that part because you weren't able to copy the whole article (due to copyright laws) or because you didn't want to talk about assisted suicide.

I thought it was time to take a look at the ableist attitudes that underlie the disability community's opposition to PAS that so many here find so unnerving.

is understandable in view of the ableist attitudes they run into everyday -- or justified by it? Or neither?

This being the point of the article.

Actively dying people like my relative should be able to choose a quicker death, and laws like we have in Washington aren't being used against disabled people. Instead, the dying people the laws were meant to help have a difficult time meeting all the requirements. My dying relative with cancer couldn't find even one physician willing to help her, much less the two required by the law.

If a competent person in her nineties with terminal cancer can't take advantage of the law, why are we worried that doctors will kill disabled people who don't want to die?

I'm sorry you had to endure such suffering.

Because that's what the OP introduced, as they often do. It wasn't just about choosing to live disabled rather than dying, it was about removing the ability, or making sure you never get the ability, to choose how you die, disabled or not. To make you suffer needlessly in the last few months or weeks or days of life rather than being given the choice of a painless exit that we will allow for dogs, but not humans.

I have no idea why these are conflated beyond absurd fantasies of medical pogroms against the lives of unwilling disabled people, but that's what was going on; not just choosing life when you have plenty to live for, but not being able to choose to safely and painlessly end it when you are facing nothing more than bedridden hopeless force-fed torture for your final weeks and when you yourself make that choice.

You have endured and survived a lot. You are right. Too easy for people to say what they'd do when it has never happened to them. Mr. Hawking, Helen Keller - people can contribute from amazingly depressing conditions.

I travel a road in my neighborhood a lot to get into town. On the way is a Habitat for humanity area. I have to stop behind a bus that picks up severely disabled kids in wheelchairs and such, it can take 10 minutes to get them loaded, I see the mothers waiting for them to load, I think there are three of them in this small area. I don't think we realize how life shattering it is, and how hard it is for them to get the pieces picked up. I think it was an eye opener for me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote....

For in the mud and scum of things
there always, always something sings.


Peace to each and every one of you posting here.