Source: Not Dead Yet
By Carol Cleigh Sutton
The very heart of the argument for assisted suicide/euthanasia (AS/E) is that an individual may be better off dead than disabled.
The fact that this argument can be made in respectable public forums demonstrates just how ableist this society is. How deeply the severely abled fear and loathe those of us who live with disability.
Ableism, like racism and sexism, is an ugly prejudice that society holds towards its minority members.
What does ableism look like? First you exclude us from nearly all public life and especially gainful employment and instead put us ‘on the dole.’ Then, periodically, you cut those supports from under us or make us try to prove that we’re ‘worthy’ of such supports. You openly stare at us and your comments and prurient questions make public spaces hostile. If we object, you accuse us of being maladjusted or just not being able to take a joke. A disabled man in the Netherlands is constantly told that it is ‘his fault’ that he lives with a disability; after all, he could kill himself. Where AS/E has become the norm, disabled people are even more outcast.
Our lives are seen as not worth living, but these are the lives we have.