Legacy Matters

The Resistance: Not Dead Yet

I was unprepared at the power of disability advocates who speak from the authority of their own experience to say they are not dead yet .  They are leading a resistance and opposition to those who too blithely dismiss life in a wheelchair, or blind, or brain-damaged as not worth living.

Maybe this is the beginning of a real debate in America's marketplace of ideas over the value of a human life and it's taking place in the context of the Oscar win of Million Dollar Baby (M$B) and in the case of Terry Schiavo. 

Here are what some cripples say about Million Dollar Baby with its "better dead than disabled" message.
John Hockenberry asks whether suicide is the only option available to someone with a spinal cord injury and are they going to tell that to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed hospital.
Mary Johnson says don't confuse the disability rights opposition with either conservatives or the Christian right, don't dismiss it as part of the left-right culture debate and don't ignore it.
Diane Coleman, an attorney in a wheelchair,  wished she had brought a sign to M$B saying, "I Am Not Better Off Dead."

Disability advocates are shocked by Judge Greer's recent order which they call an order of execution because it requires Michael Schiavo to begin starving and dehydrating Terri Schiavo on March 18, 2005 absent a stay from the appellate courts.

"Ordered and Adjudged that absent a stay from the appellate courts, the guardian, Michael Schiavo, shall cause the removal of nutrition and hydration from the ward, Theresa Marie Schiavo, at 1:00 pm on Friday, March 18, 2005."

Disclosure: I've not yet seen Million Dollar Baby and plan to do so;  I have a disabled sister; I've great admiration for Clint Eastwood; and I believe that we all have the right to forego extraordinary means to keep us alive if we have executed a proper health care proxy or living will.  I'm not against the right to die, I am against euthanasia and murder.  I am for the right to live for the old, the retarded and the disabled.  Inconvenience, unattractiveness, and expense are not reasons to put them to death.

UPDATE:  Wesley Smith writes about the Million Dollar Missed Opportunity Clint Eastwood missed.

[T]he bigger sin of the movie is its peddling of dangerous ignorance. For example, the movie depicts Maggie as a mere slave to medical protocols. In reality, she would have had the legal right to refuse medical treatment--even if it meant that she would die. Thus, she could have ordered her respirator turned off. Indeed, given today's increasing utilitarianist tendencies in health care, bioethicists, social workers, and doctors involved with her care might well have repeatedly reminded her of that fact (hint, hint).
Secondly, while it is true that many people who become quadriplegic later in life become very depressed and suicidal--like Maggie in the movie--studies show that such existential despair is not usually permanent. Indeed, one medical report published several years ago found that the level of depression in people disabled later in life to be no different five years post-injury than that found among the able bodied. Moreover, people suffering the emotional agony that Maggie experienced in the film can be treated for their depression and their suicides prevented--without being force-sedated.

The most important point omitted from the film is that people with quadriplegia, when they are not merely warehoused in a nursing home, live very rich and satisfying lives. That Eastwood never seems to have given this matter any thought is odd, given that Christopher Reeve demonstrated famously that becoming quadriplegic does not mean that meaningful life ends. Similarly, Joni Erickson Tada became a world famous artist, disability rights activist, and Christian apologist after becoming near-quadriplegic. Meanwhile, every day tens of thousands of our disabled brothers and sisters lead meritorious and productive lives, aided by respirators and wheelchairs that come to be seen not as dignity-robbing impediments, but facilitators and tools of independent living.

UPDATE 2  I failed to say that YOU have the responsibility to execute a health care proxy and appoint someone you trust to make the life and death decisions in the event you cannot.  No one else can do it for you.  I wish Terry Schiavo had done so. 

UPDATE 3 Gerald Vanderleun writes on The Passion of the Pope about what we are learning from the Pope as he shows us how to die.