Disabled Are Fearful: Who Will Be Next?

L.A.Times ^ | October 29, 2003 | Stephen Drake

[nickcarraway]

By Stephen Drake, Stephen Drake is the research analyst of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group.

Bob and Mary Schindler consistently refer to their daughter, Terri, as a disabled person. They're right.

Although most newspapers are covering this story as an "end of life" or "right to life" issue, what ultimately happens to Terri Schiavo will affect countless other people with disabilities in this country.

[MarMema]

Just call whatever you want "medical treatment" and you have a license to kill. I picture them campaigning against diabetics because insulin is medical treatment

Exactly on the money, you are, FV.

[sport]

Disabled Are Fearful: Who Will Be Next?
Thy better be fearful, because if the courts are allowed to kill Terri, it won't be long before the courts start working on them.

Also the unemployed, retired, and people on welfare had better start looking over thier shoulder.

I understand. It will never happen here. They are only going to kill the old who have miles and miles of tubing connecting them to the machines.

Well, the citizens in Holland and Denmark bought the line about the old people that were connected to machines would be better off dead and allowed the government to kill them.

Now the old people who are relatively are afraid to go to the doctor for fear that the doctors will kill them.

Can it happen here? Ask any farmer or rancher whose dog has killed aheep or chicken, and once it has tasted the blood, if it stops at just killing one. It will continue to kill until it is killed.

Government killing works on the same principle. Start with the obvious, unborn and partiallly babies, the very old, and work on down.

One exception: The execution of cold blooded murderers.

[nmh]

Perhaps Christopher Reeves? Or Stepehn Hawkins - I don't think he's dead yet ... if he is, hey maybe according to plublic sentiment, being disabled then he should have been starved to death like they're trying with Terri.

[sport]

If you will notice, she did not want to die until he got his money from the lawsuit.

People have asked, "Is Michael lying?"

I ask, "Has Michael ever told the truth?"

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

Thanks for posting. This is a powerful commentary, here is more of what he had to say:

[ I was born brain-damaged as a result of a forceps delivery. The doctor told my parents I would be a "vegetable" for the rest of my life — the same word now being used for Schiavo — and that the best thing would be for nature to take its course. They refused. Although I had a lot of health problems, surgeries and pain as a child, I went on to lead a happy life. ]

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

These Dr. Mengele death squads have been around for awhile. Here is more from the article:

[ Up until the mid-1980s, U.S. pediatrics journals routinely published reports on the selection criteria used to determine which disabled infants born in hospitals would be left to die.

One of the most notorious incidents involved a team at Oklahoma Children's Hospital in the late 1970s that used a "quality of life" formula for children born with spina bifida that factored in the parents' economic and educational level. Poor and uneducated parents and those on public assistance were more frequently advised to not treat their children. Twenty-four babies with spina bifida died, mostly from untreated infections. Not one person on the medical team was charged with a crime.

About 20 years ago, a hospital staff in Indiana was starving an infant with Down's syndrome. A whistle-blower alerted authorities, and the district attorney went to court to order hydration. The judge refused. Public comment supported the idea that "difficult" decisions like starving disabled infants were best left to the privacy of doctor-parent consultation.

In spite of that, enough of the public was sufficiently outraged to create a stir that cut across the political spectrum in Washington. As a result, congressional legislation was drafted to prevent medical killings of disabled infants.

The legislation, which ultimately was passed, was decried by bioethicists, physicians and others as an attack on both the medical profession and the privacy of family decisions. As a result of the passage of the law, though, more of us avoided getting killed in hospital nurseries through denial of treatment. ]

[cgk]

I'm in the same position you are. I'm 33, have multiple sclerosis and doctors told me I can look forward to the next 50 years slowly becoming more and more disabled. My grandmother (has MS too, can't figure this out) sends me magazines showing MS patients in wheelchairs and in the disabled olympics (skis specially fastened to themselves).

This kind of thinking scares the *&*^ out of me... I guess according to the left I'm not worth the time and effort. Maybe if I had breast cancer they'd hold a rally for me?

According to some of them I should have just been murdered in the womb, if there was a way to predict who would have MS or CP or anything else some of us end up with. Thank God my husband doesn't feel the same. Both of us pray for Terri and her family.

And pray that we are able to maintain the sanctity of life position over the quality of life position in our society. Who is anyone to tell me what my QUALITY of life is? Or you?


Thank YOU.

[Mfkmmof4]

Because since you are not 100% perfect in some eyes you can't possibly know that you life is meaningless. When I was growing up I kept hearing from adults that to become parents it should be licensed. The problem I saw was who decides who should and should not be licensed.

I am the parent of an autistic child who can drive dead people to drink He is now 12 and has COME further then I ever thought he would. His "normal" school gave up on him. Now he is doing math problems where he has to borrow.

Our society has become expedient and if you hold us down you got to go...IMHO.

Thank God you and your Grandmother are part of this life :)

[ncdave4life]

The full article can be read here:
http://www.talkabouthealthnetwork.com/group/misc.handicap/messages/51669.html