DaisyJane
I probably should be working.
Please don't suggest that you have any inkling of what my experiences are, or have been. For someone so concerned with assumptions driving ethical discussions I would strongly suggest you check yours.
MAID Concerns - How Will Our Politicians Respond?
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Please don't suggest that you have any inkling of what my experiences are, or have been. For someone so concerned with assumptions driving ethical discussions I would strongly suggest you check yours.
Like I said. People respect your opinion. Your feelings. Your experiences. I mean you plural. Polite upper middle class. Ours has lost. People are going to die because of it. Disabled people will die off because you fought to end "our suffering" through death, not resources.
I resent the power you have to silence my voice DJ.
History is written by the victors. You won. MAiD for pwd's is going to be a thing.
History is written by the victors. You won. MAiD for pwd's is going to be a thing.
BetteTheRed
Resident Heretic
- Pronouns
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Except that her experience is the absolute opposite, Kimmio?
Matthew was sacred. So are you. So am I. So is DJ.
But those with the most autonomy should be entitled to make the same kind of end of life decisions one would make for a pet for themselves, and imminent death isn't all of it.
Matthew was sacred. So are you. So am I. So is DJ.
But those with the most autonomy should be entitled to make the same kind of end of life decisions one would make for a pet for themselves, and imminent death isn't all of it.
Then why do you not grant people with disabilities fighting for their Human Rights, the same privelege?
I don't know. My landlady/ sil just spent $1500 on her elderly cat but lowering the rent for human beings is a problem for those who can make a buck off of people who are poor. I'm anticipating that vet bill to impact my living circumstances.
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And how dare you compare those of us living with disabilities, to animals. Hitler did that too. The whole MAiD Dying with Dignity campaign that put forth those ideas, was ableist propaganda. I know several people who'd spend more to rehabilitate their pets than they would on human beings - and then find some way to use human beings to recoup the cost. It's a faulty argument. It's always been a faulty argument.
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Don’t pretend that the MAiD proponents had their voices oppressed. They sure as hell didn’t or we wouldn’t still be having this argument with one side dismissing international law. The disability community at large, saw the danger of including disability in the MAiD law right from the start. We saw how lives of people with disabilities were being degraded, even by politicians who knew better. Including disability in the law was deliberate. Our lives were already at risk, due to systemic discrimination, before the MAiD bill was even proposed. The Dying with Dignity lobby is a powerful international group with lots of money. Their history is rooted in eugenics. We knew that their lawyers were not going to stop at terminal illness. The word “disability” was the key to that unfolding. We knew they would target every biologically ”inferior” group, in the interest of money saving, until they were catching everybody in their wide net, that they felt had an “undignified” life (Life unworthy of life - that was either Hitler or Goebbels who said that) in their big net: disabled people, elderly people, people with mental illness, and even kids - there are parents who want to let their “mature” kids choose to die, and even parents arguing to make the choice for young kids. (And I was called “sick”?) Some people wouldn’t stop at “medical” disadvantages, if they could go further. After 4 years of Trump, you should all know that. So, that’s why we have human rights, we have international law, our country agrees to protect the lives of the historically disadvantaged, and endeavours to level the playing field. Supposedly. A key aspect of human rights is to make sure the voices of those most at risk and historically disadvantaged, are raised so they might be heard first, not pushed down. Unless they’re disabled?
It’s a catch 22. If we give those with greater power an equal voice to speak against the interest of our very lives, we are actually magnifying their oppressive power. If we are polite and cordial about having our human rights erased, they will be. And by the time we’ve been degraded enough that we’re so angry and dismayed, and we fit your “angry cripple” stereotype, some of you will use those feelings to justify dehamanizing us anyway.
It’s a catch 22. If we give those with greater power an equal voice to speak against the interest of our very lives, we are actually magnifying their oppressive power. If we are polite and cordial about having our human rights erased, they will be. And by the time we’ve been degraded enough that we’re so angry and dismayed, and we fit your “angry cripple” stereotype, some of you will use those feelings to justify dehamanizing us anyway.
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I resent people who let this happen - the fact that C7 is even being proposed should alarm people, but it isnt alarming enough people, especially people with power. I resent it like I resent the people who enabled four years of Trump and turned their heads away while neonizis gained power, while kids were put in cages and their parents were “lost” to them, while BLM was denigrated, while muslims were “banned”, while LGBTQ rights were attacked. Trump happened mostly out of economic self interest - which were false promises because the guy was a sleazy salesman all along and it‘s baffling that it wasn’t obvious to his voters - and I’m not so sure that those ultimately behind the effort that took people in the direction of Trump, are not the same far-right powers that may have taken previously “human rights for all“ liberals in the direction of supporting MAiD. In fact, I think the political minds behind that way up there out of anyone’s view, some of the powers and principalities, were of the same ideology that elected Trump. The script was flipped. Similar tactic. The oppressors calling the oppressed, oppressors. Calling the advantaged disadvantaged. Calling murder “compassion”. Demonizing those whose lives are at risk. And conditioning as many of the public as they can, to think the same.
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Before I leave here. Speaking of voices not heard. No matter how polite and well presented my argument was - including laying out the UN Convention Canada signed onto that a 6th grader should understand... for the past 6 years not a single able-bodied middle class liberal person I encountered in daily life understood or really heard me. Not even people I've known my whole life. Not one. Not until only weeks ago. I felt like I was pleading with a wall made of money and privelege. Considering the timing, and that it was an about-face from public opinion 10 years ago - I really do think that the same powers that poisoned the well to get people to elect Trump, also poisoned the well of public opinion to erode the human rights of people with disabilities in Canada. I think people with disabilities might be SOL now. Because the dual disasters of Trump and Brexit - and the alarming growth of the far right out of those places - people are listening, at the moment, to disability rights groups in the US and UK - as they are listening to the concerns of all marginalized groups in that aftermath. For now. Somehow Canada held the rights of people with disabilities separate, less important, from the rights of other marginalized groups. Maybe you were duped. And maybe we'll get our rights back someday if/ after it plays out in favour of human rights for all, in the US and UK. We usually follow their political lead. But for now I think we were discarded. Some voices, lives, were more "sacred" than others.
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Imagine ableism disabling someone elses abilities!
This will happen if you have the will to override another's talents ... that may be believed thoughts ... even if they believed in err ... or Eire ... a mindfullness factor that is generally lost to humans as wills, wishes and desires expound ... exponentially!
Could it be we are all connected and related contrary to religio stating opposing factors? In some of d' lexicons that word is indicative of compounding and from there complexity mounts ... piled with that factor we're screwed down! Know God ... that's the word but we avoid understanding word ... thus the unspeakable!
After that off we go into the great mystery ... somewhat inky! Shades of indigo ...
One has to respect the constructs of psyche ... no matter how loathed ...
This will happen if you have the will to override another's talents ... that may be believed thoughts ... even if they believed in err ... or Eire ... a mindfullness factor that is generally lost to humans as wills, wishes and desires expound ... exponentially!
Could it be we are all connected and related contrary to religio stating opposing factors? In some of d' lexicons that word is indicative of compounding and from there complexity mounts ... piled with that factor we're screwed down! Know God ... that's the word but we avoid understanding word ... thus the unspeakable!
After that off we go into the great mystery ... somewhat inky! Shades of indigo ...
One has to respect the constructs of psyche ... no matter how loathed ...
People should never have been arguing for our “equal right to death” before our equal right to life was secure. It is not. And I’m bitter about it. It was argued in backwards priority. On purpose.
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DaisyJane
I probably should be working.
There's a lot to unpack Kimmio, but I will try.
1) You seem to think that I have some level of power that I do not. While it is true that I now have a voice in the discussion, I spent years as a graduate student being told by able-bodied male academics that I didn't know what I was talking about. I have been told I was anti-intellectual because I insisted that the lived experience needed to be part of theological conversations in ways it wasn't. I have been told that I wasn't smart enough to understand scholars like Vanier, simply because I disagreed with some of his arguments. I was very close to walking away from my PhD studies because I was tired of fighting for my voice to be heard in an ivory tower that was disconnected from the lived experience of disability.. Similarly, you seem to think I have some power in medical discussions. I can assure you that as a parent I was often rendered voiceless in important discussions, and that was very much the motivator for attending graduate school.
2) You also seem to think that I have not spent decades advocating for my son, and that I do not use my voice, experience, and education to address injustice for people with disabilities. That suggestion is patently unfair, and not true. I agree with you that oppression and poverty are very serious concerns for PWDs, and regardless what you seem to think about what I do, I am actively involved in social justice initiatives to address those concerns. You only know a small fraction of my story and you are quick to fill in gaps with false assumptions about who I am and the work I do -mostly to support this personally constructed image that you have of me. As a result you engage in the classical logical fallacy of ad hominem (one among many) - attacking the person rather than the argument. Whenever I enter the discussion, rather than engaging the ideas, you immediately attack me, my education, and my experience. It happened within minutes of my arriving last night. This is unfortunate because it means that we'll never be able to nuance our discussion, and nuance is essential.
3) I agree with you that conflating disability with suffering is problematic with respect to MAID. I have said this every time we have had this discussion. To make meaningful changes that ensure the rights of people who live with disabilities we need to have this difficult, but nuanced discussion. Conflating disability with suffering creates many ethical challenges. Disability does not always equal suffering, and I absolutely agree with the arguments of disability advocates that the blanket conflation of disability and suffering is troubling. But in some cases disability, and particularly aggressive, deteriorating, terminal disability (ie: ALS, some forms of dementia/cancers, etc) meets the threshold of personally defined suffering. Similarly some later onset/acquired disabilities = suffering. Research is clear that the experiences of people with congenital disabilities and (some) people with acquired disability can be vastly different - and we need to create space for that conversation. Universally forcing people to live with conditions that they have personally decided are incompatible with quality of life is cruel and we need to respect the rights of people to limit their suffering. This is why consent and capacity are key issues in the discussion. Part of the problem is that disability is not this universal "thing". It is a complex idea and experience and requires unpacking - for the MAID conversation, and for others.
1) You seem to think that I have some level of power that I do not. While it is true that I now have a voice in the discussion, I spent years as a graduate student being told by able-bodied male academics that I didn't know what I was talking about. I have been told I was anti-intellectual because I insisted that the lived experience needed to be part of theological conversations in ways it wasn't. I have been told that I wasn't smart enough to understand scholars like Vanier, simply because I disagreed with some of his arguments. I was very close to walking away from my PhD studies because I was tired of fighting for my voice to be heard in an ivory tower that was disconnected from the lived experience of disability.. Similarly, you seem to think I have some power in medical discussions. I can assure you that as a parent I was often rendered voiceless in important discussions, and that was very much the motivator for attending graduate school.
2) You also seem to think that I have not spent decades advocating for my son, and that I do not use my voice, experience, and education to address injustice for people with disabilities. That suggestion is patently unfair, and not true. I agree with you that oppression and poverty are very serious concerns for PWDs, and regardless what you seem to think about what I do, I am actively involved in social justice initiatives to address those concerns. You only know a small fraction of my story and you are quick to fill in gaps with false assumptions about who I am and the work I do -mostly to support this personally constructed image that you have of me. As a result you engage in the classical logical fallacy of ad hominem (one among many) - attacking the person rather than the argument. Whenever I enter the discussion, rather than engaging the ideas, you immediately attack me, my education, and my experience. It happened within minutes of my arriving last night. This is unfortunate because it means that we'll never be able to nuance our discussion, and nuance is essential.
3) I agree with you that conflating disability with suffering is problematic with respect to MAID. I have said this every time we have had this discussion. To make meaningful changes that ensure the rights of people who live with disabilities we need to have this difficult, but nuanced discussion. Conflating disability with suffering creates many ethical challenges. Disability does not always equal suffering, and I absolutely agree with the arguments of disability advocates that the blanket conflation of disability and suffering is troubling. But in some cases disability, and particularly aggressive, deteriorating, terminal disability (ie: ALS, some forms of dementia/cancers, etc) meets the threshold of personally defined suffering. Similarly some later onset/acquired disabilities = suffering. Research is clear that the experiences of people with congenital disabilities and (some) people with acquired disability can be vastly different - and we need to create space for that conversation. Universally forcing people to live with conditions that they have personally decided are incompatible with quality of life is cruel and we need to respect the rights of people to limit their suffering. This is why consent and capacity are key issues in the discussion. Part of the problem is that disability is not this universal "thing". It is a complex idea and experience and requires unpacking - for the MAID conversation, and for others.
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You do have a more powerful voice than I do. And every time you step into the room you squash mine with your upper hand. Every time you walk into the room I feel like you just have to mention your son, and your degrees, and my voice is silenced. Even though, I don’t actually think you are smarter, you’ve just had better opportunities and could afford all that school. Academics can sometimes narrow our view of the real world - as you’ve said in relation to the ivory tower you experienced. From my POV, you are the ivory tower person. And you aren’t a person with a disability. Your son had profound disabilities and you loved and cared for him. I respect you for that. But you cannot speak for the majority of disabled adults living with disabilities - mostly in poverty - who want our lives improved before our expedient access to death is secured. You do not speak for us. If you did you’d be taking our side. That’s the disability movement that got screwed. MAiD should never ever have passed before our concerns, and we’re in the many thousands, maybe millions around the world, were addressed. I mean, I knew the public hated us, deep down the prejudice was always lurking - but it was only 6 years ago, when I saw disability in the wording of Billc14, that I realized that they wanted to kill us. It was literally one of the worst moments of my life. Until Bill C7 came up. Plus all the nazi s**t in that time period. You can say from your ivory tower that they have no relation to one another, but they do. Historically and presently, thats a factor in attitudes toward all minorities. And you think that’s paranoid but thousands of us don’t and you don’t speak for us. If you did you wouldn’t be using nuance as an excuse. You say nuance. I hear ableism. And I have a permanent disability. You don’t. The last time nuance was hammered at me, people insisted that the law wasn’t going to be used to give MAiD to disabled people. Except it is. You were either wrong, or not honest about that. I’m really angry about it, and how much weight your words carried here while our rights slipped away. So you go ahead and stay. Talk to the echo chamber. I’m leaving.
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Pinga
Room for All
This is the part of which i am working to understand, @DaisyJane and why i reached out to you for further understanding. (Recognizing the amount of time /study you have put into ideas of suffering, disability and championing for the rights.
I recognize the language that we use for "putting down" pets, for example tends to be about their suffering. In our family, it is about their pain but, also, with pets there isn't the ability to get input from them when they are well.
I would like to be "put down" at the point where my suffering has reached a particular point. In some diseases, such as cancers of other than the brain, most people are able to communicate. In other words, Humans do have the ability to get input on where they are , and that continues as diseases progress. Diseases that you mention that are degenerative, such as dementia, ALS, are items which cause particular challenges due to the inability to communicate at the point where people's predetermined factors exist in their bodies.
In other cases, such as when a person's life changes dramatically due to an event, I sense that there may be suffering of the individual., whether it be extreme physical pain, or mental. As @kimmio mentioned, that may require time for adjustment, and so, i get the protection around that, to ensure that the individual is appropriately aware and has had supports to be able to not just survive, but live.
So, with something that is a degenerative disease, what is reasonable, and where would people consider the point that they would say, they no longer wish to survive. How reasonable is it to do that in advance?
Pinga
Room for All
@Kimmio - i also recognize that you have lived experience and wisdom; however, I have been unable to have conversations with you regarding this topic, without it becoming a person attack, or being labelled an ablist. I get it. That is where you are, but, it doesn't help me learn when I am just slammed.
How many more years do you need to learn? You can read up and research the disability rights movement, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Charter, all that, can’t you? Why make me work to the point of utter dismay to explain it when you didn’t care to really understand it before MAiD was passed?
Pinga
Room for All
@Kimmio you missed the point.
We come here to discuss. If you can only go on the attack, without discussion, then, it isn't a "discussion".
If the item was cut & dried, we wouldn't have the challenges that occur in the court and the differences between countries in the treatment of such items as end-of-life for dementia patients.
We come here to discuss. If you can only go on the attack, without discussion, then, it isn't a "discussion".
If the item was cut & dried, we wouldn't have the challenges that occur in the court and the differences between countries in the treatment of such items as end-of-life for dementia patients.
It’s not reasonable to do it in advance. It may be reasonable to do it close to the time of death and minimize suffering - but life is still a life even though your former self projected hate onto your future self enough to kill them in advance.