Interesting interview with disability-rights activist Mary Johnson on Million Dollar Baby, Hunter S. Thompson and the “right” to die.
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal
2 responses to “"I support the right to die. You go first."”
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The angry, prideful term “crips” – fascinating that identity politics has made it to the world of the “differently-abled.”
But she is making some very similar arguments to anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia arguments put forward by some Christians. I especially liked the following quote:
“Proponents insist safeguards exist. But those safeguards, says Harriet McBryde Johnson, whose articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, “are about defining a class whose desire to die may be presumed rational, because of illness or disability so ‘bad’ that no ‘reasonable’ person would want to endure it.” Right to die laws, says Johnson, have “the power to validate and structure prejudice — to tell suicidal newbies that yes, it really is as bad as it feels, and don’t expect it ever to get better. They tell the larger society that disability and illness equal misery, so there’s no need to bother about making our lives good. There’s an easy way out.”
This echoes something I posted on a blog last year about assisted suicide for terminally ill people – which reads:
“In saying, “Why force the terminally ill person to live?” you have put a value judgment on that person’s life. It is no longer incumbent upon the person, by his free choices, to make the best of the days he has remaining. By making death an option, you are, in effect, making it the only rational option. “What rational person would want to live through terminal illness?” is the actual argument of most proponents of assisted suicide. In promoting the “choice,” you are really taking away the freedom of a person to choose anything but dying as quickly as possible.”
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Upon first reading I thought “crips” was referring to gang members, and I kept waiting for the connection!
A Thinking Reed 
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