An incredible piece by a woman with disabilities... As a disabled person, Im accustomed to conversations about quality of life and dignity. Specifically, Im accustomed to assuring people that my life is worth living. Im short statured, a wheelchair user, and I frequently have bone fractures. All the visual cues that make me the other are front and centre. People make all sorts of assumptions about the quality of my life and my levels of independence. Theyre almost always wrong. **** What we as a society think we know about what it means to live as a disabled person comes from cultural representations of disability seen through a non-disabled lens. And we, as people with disability, rarely get to tell our own stories. **** As an opponent of legalising assisted death, watching my grandfather wanting to die and being unable to give him the release he desperately wanted was heartbreaking. And yet I still believe we need more robust conversation if we are to pass a law that truly balances the wishes of those who want to die with adequate safeguards for those who dont. Before we can talk about death with dignity, we need to ensure that all people, regardless of age or disability, can live with dignity. Were not there yet.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:06:32 +0000
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