People look at her, and are just, on some level, revulsed. You know, because she looks pathetic and inelegant. (Very similar to how people can be revulsed by a mentally retarded person.)
Therefore, people envision themselves being like that, and in particular, how embarrassed they'd be if they looked like that.
If they made those groaning noises instead of speaking clearly - how humiliating!
If they had to be fed - oh, how horrible! Just like a baby!
Therefore, with a wave of their hands, they declare "I just wouldn't wanna live like that. It's not worth living like that. Go ahead and kill me if I'm like that." That's how easy it is to say. (Especially since 99.999% of the people saying it know, deep down, that the issue will never come up for them.)
I just don't get the impression that a great deal of thought has gone into it. (Look at the people ready to blithely declare that even being fed through a tube would make life not worth it!)
I think it's mostly just an aesthetic reaction. She looks icky, so she's better of dead.
Right, she looks icky so better off dead and then combine that will all the misinformation the media reports and you get people thinking that MS and Greer made the right decision.
Oh, dear friend, you couldn't be more right. I won't go into how my appearance changed when I went through my period of severe disability, but, oh, boy, was that really the thing that got people going.
"You used to be so beautiful. It must be so hard."
Well, no. What's hard is not being able to move and being in pain. Somehow I'm not concerned about doing my hair and makeup.
Also on this "looks icky" issue---because people now mostly warehouse the disabled and elderly, many people have no personal experience of being around a loved one who comes to look "icky." So it is quite shocking the first time they see someone in a nursing home.
Previously, we all knew what it was like when a person lost their looks and got bad skin and bad teeth and drooled and it was soooo embarrassing. It was difficult, but part of life.
Now we sanitize our experience because life has to be perfect or it's not worth living. For goodness sake, 16 year old girls feel they have to have boob jobs or life's not worth living. Imagine if they had an illness and their skin got yucky. How could they cope if they don't, through the experience, get a clue?