Let me just say I disagree 100% (with your prejudices against disability, cognitive ability, and physical symmetry). Your conflation of intelligence, attractiveness and disability is absolutely abhorrent. I also think your lack of respect for passionately held beliefs and the work of several people on this list (life's work in Marta's and Chuck's cases) makes any discussion impossible.
Jim
At 03:08 PM 7/25/01, Luke wrote:
>I don't think the issue should be whether or not a life lived with a
>disability is worth living. Most all lives fit that criterion. However, if
>fetuses with severe disabilities are aborted, it allows the parents to have
>another child whose life is presumably more worth living because it isn't
>hindered by a disability. This isn't meant as a condemnation of the
>disabled. If my parents had conceived a more intelligent and better-looking
>child in place of myself, presumably her life would've been more worth
>living than mine.
________________________________ "Life...
Who lives? Who dies? Whose life is given value? Whose life is measured by cost? Society in every generation seeks control of life and breath. We never learn. Again people speak of murders of people with disabilities not as evidence of brutal bigotry but as compassion. "She was set free of a life of disability." "He is now whole in God's arms."
We are assured that there will be safeguards. Doctors and tribunals will oversee the decisions of death. It is an experiment that has been tried. A society, not long ago, decided that people with disabilities had 'life not worthy of life.' They set up a tribunal of doctors to review case histories. Each doctor would rate the life of a person with a disability. If they were deemed as having life not worthy of life a big red "X" would be marked on the file. If the person was deemed as having some redeeming value the doctors would mark the file with a big blue line.
XX = Death -- = Life.
There were few blue lines. With the full approval of the medical community, with the co-operation of doctors, the killing began. It is a chilling fact that the first mass death equipment was test run in a state medical facility. This fact must have made the man who would soon kill millions, smile. If you can imagine Hitler smiling.
Wearing this blue line I assert that NEVER AGAIN will others determine the value of the lives lived in the disability community. Wearing this blue line I assert that I will not be silent when the face of bigotry wears a little black mustache....Worthy of Life."
--Dave Hinsburger