A lot of SHSers have written to me about this and I think it is worth highlighting: A public row in the UK has raised the fearful meme that we should be allowed to kill children with disabilities who are suffering. From the story:
Television pundit Virginia Ironside prompted outrage yesterday after saying she would suffocate a child to end its suffering. Shocked BBC viewers complained after the agony aunt said she would hold a pillow over the face of a child in pain. Minutes earlier the controversial writer said ‘a loving mother’ would abort an unwanted or disabled baby, and praised abortion as ‘a moral and unselfish act’…She added: ‘If I were the mother of a suffering child – I mean a deeply suffering child – I would be the first to want to put a pillow over its face… If it was a child I really loved, who was in agony, I think any good mother would.’
Commentators accused the controversial writer of advocating eugenics, and disability rights campaigners branded her views ‘despicable’.
I have warned that our neurotic obsession with eliminating–as opposed to mitigating or alleviating–suffering leads directly to support for eliminating the sufferer. Yes, some were outraged by the statement. But the UK has already taken a hard turn onto Euthanasia Road, accepting killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering to the point that the public prosecutor has stated he won’t punish some assisted suicides. That leads directly, if farther down the road, to infanticide, as it has in the Netherlands and Belgium. In other words, with controversies like this the ground is being paved.
Indeed, we see increased support for the killing of the littlest sufferers–and not just from Peter Singer. For example–and I wish I were surprised–in the wake of the Ironside brouhaha, the left wing Guardian published an opinion article by Zoe Williams, “Abortion and Euthanasia: Was Virginia Ironside Right?”, who answers her own question, why yes she was. From the column’s conclusion:
There is a furious lobby that attaches a eugenicist tag to anybody who is pro-choice or euthanasia, but it silences its opponents in an underhand way by accusing them of hostility towards the disabled. Of course Ironside is not waging a war against the disabled: she simply said “life isn’t a gift per se”. There are plenty of circumstances that make it more burdensome than joyful. The fact that Ironside ruffled any feathers at all illustrates how important it is not to take this as tacit, but to say it out loud.
Of course it is hostility when killing is advocated as the answer to a life that is “more burdensome than joyful!” Good grief.
Many eugenicists of old advocated killing disabled babies and other unfit as if they were “weeds.” This is no different. The neo-eugenicists have simply learned not to express direct hostility for those they would prefer eliminated. Rather, the killing agenda it is couched in gooey euphemisms and words of oozing compassion. But the key point to remember is that the act advocated is the same. The underlying evil is no less loathsome merely because it is wearing prettier clothes.
October 4th, 2010 | 10:26 pm
Makes me sick.
October 4th, 2010 | 10:31 pm
So, do these people visualize gradations? If a stranger’s child stubs her toe, am I supposed to unilaterally knock her out with a two-by-four for an hour or two? Or am I supposed to carry around packets of Mickey Finns to make scraped knee victims unconscious?
October 4th, 2010 | 10:31 pm
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October 5th, 2010 | 1:49 am
Hiding their love of their own convenience behind words of ‘compassion’. Do they realize how transparent they are? I have cerebral palsy, a sister with Down’s and a dozen or so in-laws with severe disabilities, and all of us are happy with our lives. People like this may have never really known a disabled person, may have heard only horror stories, or never had the strength to handle what they did experience. Pray for them.
October 5th, 2010 | 9:30 am
This of course is the same Virginia Ironside who appears here http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/nov/16/thegreenroom.ethicalliving in a section called “The green room: Ethical living.” I guess there’s ethics and then there’s ethics.
October 5th, 2010 | 2:57 pm
[...] favorite bioethicist, Wesley J. Smith, weighs in: I have warned that our neurotic obsession with eliminating–as opposed to mitigating or [...]
October 5th, 2010 | 5:20 pm
Virginia is getting on up in age, so isn’t it “times up” for you also Virginia sicko?
October 5th, 2010 | 5:56 pm
A loving mother/parent would take care of her (or his child) regardless of anything not kill it because it’s inconvienant.
October 5th, 2010 | 8:47 pm
I think a lot of this “compassionate killing” talk is really driven by the disgust some people have around the disabled.
That is, Virginia Ironside and her ilk are motivated to kill disabled infants less because their disabilities make the infants uncomfortable, and more because the infants’ disabilities make *them* uncomfortable.
October 5th, 2010 | 9:17 pm
Zoe Williams is not as extreme as your excerpt makes it seem…but she is still wrong because her argument has the common, fatal flaw:
It is no use to speak about the “quality of life” of others. That is, for nearly all intents and pirposes, a subjective — AND changeable– measure. Only the person him/herself can report on q of l. And then it is our job to do everything possible to improve it. NOT measure it ourselves.
October 7th, 2010 | 1:30 pm
I saw the programme and Zoe Williams’s column (I was referred to by Clair Lewis’s blog which is where I first read about Ironside’s appearance on the BBC1 programme). The subject got discussed on the Vanessa Feltz show on the BBC London radio station on Monday, and I sent her this email:
Hi Vanessa,
I have the privilege of knowing a number of severely disabled people, among them two quadriplegics, one of them blind, and several with M.E., including friends of the late Lynn Gilderdale, who suffered with severe M.E. for 17 years before taking her own life in 2008. I have heard accounts of M.E. at its worst, in which the sufferer is in terrible pain, cannot move, cannot speak or swallow, and cannot tolerate noise or light or being touched. I’ve not heard of a single incident of a parent taking it upon herself to end their child’s life in that way in those circumstances. I’m horrified that someone would think it’s just the natural thing to do, or even want to do. I remember seeing interviews with Kay Gilderdale (Lynn’s mum) in which she said her heart was being ripped out as Lynn asked for help at the end.
This attitude, that a sick or disabled person’s life just isn’t worth living, is terrifying to a lot of disabled people, however widespread it is. To hear a woman say this like it’s the most natural thing in the world was simply appalling and staggering.
(Note: Kay Gilderdale assisted her daughter’s suicide by giving her syringes containing morphine with which she overdosed, and was prosecuted for it — but that’s not the same thing as simply smothering her when she deemed her to be suffering too much to make her life worth living.)
October 7th, 2010 | 1:33 pm
[...] disabled fetus is not exactly new (unfortunately), this statement really made my jaw drop. (More: Secondhand Smoke, Tara Lynn Thompson, Clair Lewis [...]
October 29th, 2010 | 11:46 pm
I have cerebral palsy, chronic pain and severe depression. At one time, I was happy with my life, but now, I have days when it takes all my willpower to NOT beg to be shot. Depression is one thing, but adding chronic pain and morphine to the mix can be downright devastating.
I feel so ashamed to feel this way, like I am betraying other people with disabilities. My doctors say that they are out of options where treatment for the depression and the physical pain are concerned. (I was also emotionally abused by my parents. I have more than enough emotional pain to drive anyone around the bend.)
I have been the victim of medical mistakes twice. My parents had me confined to a psych hospital for 18 months at age 5 and never forgave me for it. I am no weakling when it comes to pain, but being told by a chronic pain specialist that: “You need to learn to cope” or “Go home and learn to live with the pain.” , it just doesn’t cut it. Many people with disabilities have excellent quality of life–and I still understand the outrage when a mercy killing happens. But to someone in severe pain, if one has suffered long enough, death can appear to become a release. My worse fear is that I will have to live with the constant desire to end my life. It comes and goes at the moment. I surrounded myself with supportive anti-suicide friends long-ago, but it is still a struggle. I have even taken to supplementing my coventional meds with natural remedies.
My anger is not with disabled rights activists or religious people. I understand the fear of the disability community, even with the depression overwhelming everything. These people are not to blame for my suffering. (death is a release to me at times). They have every reason to fear for their own necks, should euthanasia be legalized. What angers me is being left with a choice between unending pain or death, because my doctors assure me those are my only choices left. (And for me to consider suicide, something has to be badly wrong.)
I still want to fight euthanasia, but I realize that not everyone enjoys a good quality of life. I am lost when wondering what to tell someone in a situation like mine who is more eager to end their life. I myself am left wondering what side to fight for. I do not wish to betray my brothers and sisters with disabilities, but there is a class of people who suffer desperately, whose pain I share. I ought to help them, but am not sure in what way, Not everyone is prepared to come to terms with a certain amount of pain in their lives and even I am not prepared to spend a lifetime fighting graphic obsessive thoughts of death. I apologize to my brothers and sisters in the disability community, but I may have to stop debating euthanasia altogether. I feel so ashamed for what I feel inside, but I didn’t choose to feel suicidal. It has taken every ounce of energy not to act out, or not beg to beg to be shot.
And if I ever went to the wrong people for help, no one would ask questions about my mental health history, but would aid a suicide without question. They would treat me differently from any other psych patient on the basis of my disability. That’s discrimination. There is no way you can distinguish between a right-to-die activist and someone who is suicidal apart from their words. That scares mes a lot. How many disabled people fought for suicide? How many of them had depression? Will we ever know? Will we ever find out? I am haunted by the story of one woman living in an $800 a day hospital room. She fought for the right to starve herself and is still begging for that right. I don’t want to wind up like that and I can easily see how it can happen. Chronic pain does terrible things to the mind even under control. Morphine can mess with the mind big-time. I’ve watched it take me down. I don’t want it to take down anyone else.
December 2nd, 2010 | 5:15 pm
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