Marta, I'm a Jewish person, and so keenly aware of the useful of the Nazi analogies to justify policies abhorrent to the left. I agree with Dwayne, who said that dragging in the Nazis is sign that the discussion has broken down. It sort of works like electromagnetic pulse, blowing out the circuits of all rational thought and discussion. There is no way it cannot be read as accusing your interlocutors of being complicit in genocide. Please avoid it unless you mean to do that.
I think it is probably fair to say that the number of people in America who would advocate or tolerate the extermination of the disabled is almost nil. There is no danger of a holocaust against Jews or disabled people. Put the Nazis back in the jar.
You assume that Schiavo is a disbled person when the evidence is that she is not a person at all any more -- I don't knwo this evidence in detail, but she has been examined by scores of Drs over 15 years, not all of whom are junior Megeles intent on exterminating the unfit. From what I understand their opinion is virtually unanimous.
Likewise it is ludicrous to say that Schiavo has been put in a position where she has no rights. How many courts have heard this case over how long? How many legislative and executive bodies have attempted to step in in her behalf? This ain't a case of disappearing someone into Nacht und Nebel. You wanna get concerned about that, I refer you to some people detained at Gitmo. Of course I don't know if any of them are disabled, but they sure as hell are being denied all rights.
The victims of the Nazi T-4 (extermination program for the disabled) had no one who could take their case to the courts and appeal to other government bodies. You may disagree with the outcome the courts', etc. determinations, but she has been accorded more rights thamn most of my pro bono clients, where law is carefully designed to limit their ability to get to the courts.
As for as assisted suicide or other death with dignity strategies, neither I nor any one else I have ever heard of have suggested that this is a good way to deal with disability. (I gather than this Eastwood flick may be an exception, but I have not seen it.) However, assisted suicide or euthanasia may be a good way to deal -- voluntaruly and consciously -- with terminal illness.
Frankly, people who live relatively decent lives in wheelchairs or with other disabilities, and I agree with you that apart from discrimination there is little reason why disabled people can't given perfectly decent lives -- are indulging in cruel insensitivity towards people facing horrible painful and undignified deaths if they demonize, limit, ot prohibit rational and painless suicide as an alternative.
I don't think I am the only person who thinks -- at least now -- that facing the sort of thing my father went through, I would prefer to die without agaony and degradation through medical intervention -- an OD of morphine, say. The totally hypothetical fear that this practice will start us in the path to T-4 and the holocaust of the disabled is merely selfish in the face of imposing real misery on people for whom there is no help.
Sorry to be blunt about this, but I've been facing a lot of mortality up close lately.
jks
--- Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org> wrote:
> >Dwayne wrote:
> >
> >I knew the overall quality of the *Shaivo finale*
> thread had seriously
> >deteriorated when the Nazis (the Internet
> discussion weapon of choice) were
> >pressed into service as an example of the
> implications of people's arguments
> >against keeping Schiavo alive.
>
> Good grief there has been alot of discussion going
> on overnight.
>
> I think, like with Jewish people, disabled people
> like myself, are a
> bit sensitive about anything that resembles putting
> them in a
> position without rights. The Nazis did kill over
> 300,000 disabled
> persons. The first extermination shower was built
> in a hospital.
> The holocaust started with killing mentally ill
> persons. Doctors
> continued to kill even after the Catholic Church
> forced Hitler to
> stop wholesale executions and the gas chambers were
> moved to Poland.
> We don't have a particular love of hospitals, the
> health care system
> and their interests either. Perhaps the following
> article will help
> to understand some of what I have tried to convey.
> I appreciate that
> you try!
> Marta
>
> On Assisted Suicide
> Film should focus on living with a disability
> - Vince Wetzel
> Thursday, March 17, 2005
>
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