The following comes from an Oct. 29 story by Wesley J. Smith on LifeSiteNews.com.
Disability rights activists are among the most implacable and effective opponents of legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia. In the USA, Not Dead Yet’s entry into the fray after the passage of Measure 16 in Oregon (1994), helped slow the advance of the killing agenda to a crawl.
Alarmed by the advocacy successes of these advocates, pro assisted suicide bankrollers funded Astroturf (as distinguished from “grass roots”) “disability rights” groups to support the killing agenda. Now the tactic is being tried in the UK as that country is dragged into yet another attempt to legalize physician-induced death.
Not Dead Yet UK is exposing the sham of an Astroturf group called Disability Activists for Dignity in Dying. From, “False Claims,” by Dr. Kevin Fitzpatrick:
It is true they are all disabled people. However they are individuals with a point of view, not representatives of any disabled people’s organisation. For example, this new arm of the Dignity in Dying campaign, is led by wheelchair user Greg Judge. He is listed as a member of staff and is therefore paid by Dignity in Dying to represent the organisation’s core mission and values. Hardly representative!
Not Dead Yet UK, on the other hand, is a network of disabled people working largely pro bono and who have been mandated to represent the views of many disabled people. There is a real difference.
He’s right. For nearly 20 years, I have seen people with disabilities sacrifice their own money and suffer serious discomfort to protest and lobby against assisted suicide! They did so because they know disabled people are in the cross hairs–not because they were paid lobbyists who happen to be disabled. Huge difference.
Fitzpatrick highlights the danger to people with disabilities:
Dignity in Dying people know what the evidence shows – from Holland, where children over the age of 12 are entitled, and disabled babies are euthanized because of their disability, or because of their parents’ suffering, when the law was first introduced for exactly the kind of ‘desperate, hard case’ Dignity in Dying keeps promoting to gain public sympathy – from Belgium where people who are in need of support and care are euthanized – and where the current discussion to extend euthanasia to children is proceeding but where ‘We all know that euthanasia is already practiced on children….
To read the entire story, click here.
Wesley Smith writes; “For nearly 20 years, I have seen people with disabilities sacrifice their own money and suffer serious discomfort to protest and lobby against assisted suicide!” Who are the disabled fighting? A powerful lobby who insist that the disabled would have more dignity if they were dead! Disabled individuals already have enough suffering in their lives. Now they are being forced to sacrifice still more just to preserve their very existence! But hey, we can’t have Utopia with all of those disabled folk hanging around, now can we.
Tracy asks: “Who are the disabled fighting”, in order to avoid assisted suicide?
I would suggest that they are fighting the elected officials in state legislatures and Congress who are trying to pass bills to legitimize the ending of life through stealth euthanasia tactics.
They are also fighting media reporters and commentators who use their access to the public to encourage a frame of mind sympathetic to those who suggest ways, such as the signing of POLST forms, third path, Hospice programs.
Life has become cheapened and coarsened since Roe v Wade and now we have Obamacare.
Yes Camille, I agree with you. They are fighting all of the above and more. I recently saw a documentary in which they did not use the term “life span” but “health span”. They were advocating that once our health is less than optimum then we have essentially outlived our “health span”. At this point we are to desire a type of “stealth euthanasia” you suggest.
Holland at one time sent many Catholic Missionaries to the Missions. How sad, and how disappointed Our Lord must be.
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
I think we need to understand that in the current culture we live in, any chronic illness can now be considered an unacceptable disability in the eyes of the Utopians.
Many years ago when I attended a pro life convention at a hotel, there was a convention of little people (those we used to call dwarfs) at the same time. I watched one young woman try to put her coin in the slot of the soda machine, but she could not get it to go down. I then gently pushed it in for her. I try to practice the policy of “Don’t do for someone else what they can do for him/herself” since it takes away the person’s dignity, but it was clear that this young woman could not get the coin in without getting a chair, so I helped her. Later it dawned on me that without the pro lifers, many of those men and women would not have even existed. That was one time I was very encouraged to keep on doing what I was doing. God bless all the people with disabilities — most all of us at times — and God bless all the little people. May they know some of us are watching over them.