For anyone who's just tuned in after months in a coma fighting for your precious lives, no this isn't a promo for some scary horror film, or ironic comedy, it's today's news. Try this one: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/25/d
In an unprecedented move, the Director of Public Prosecutions will release his special guide on how British citizens can aid and abet suicides with his approval.. as long as they only do it to the people he's selected as fit for death.
Helping end someone's life is a crime, which usually carries a 14 year prison sentence, but not so if the corpse is one of someone who was very sick and they were 'asking for it'. In which case, judging by recent news and the killers walking free among us, you get freedom and national hero status.
Now we will all have a neat little guide to help us kill our loved ones right.. to CPS standards. State approved Assisted Suicide Kits aren't available, but then, it takes time to organise given how many hundreds of thousands of very sick people must need their family's 'help'.
Do I sound sarcastic? Sorry I didn't mean to. Really I am absolutely furious. I'd rather see people assisted to live better lives, I believe most people who become suicidal could have their lives improved and this seems pretty basic and logical. For a more detailed explanation of why i am so strongly against assisting suicide, please see here, or a multitude of my other blogs: http://clairlewis.livejournal.com/12376.h
It's so difficult to find out what a corpse wanted, isn't it? Maybe the British justice system has Torchwood-like technology and is checking carefully what happened to its corpses by rousing them for a few minutes, yes? No.. they decide based on what the killer says after the event. Is anyone else noticing a possible flaw in this plan... is it really only those of us who fear for our lives who can see it?
Today is another nail in the coffin of disability equality and disabled people's right to live. I am ashamed to be a British disability rights activist, as my colleagues globally baulk at our news today. I wonder why despite so long campaigning, that on matters of life and death, we've been steadily backsliding for a while, less and less visible in the debates which concern our very existence. People care less what we think, even though this is about us.
A fundamentally ridiculous, contradictory and terrifying belief has taken over society which suggests people can have better equality, or lives by being dead.. or even killed through a discriminatory law made just for us. Impressive work, but very dangerous. Several times lately I have wanted to pinch myself to check if I was dreaming. But no, the DPP is really producing this guide and the public really do think it is different and more acceptable to kill someone who is sick, or to 'assist' their suicide than it would be if it were anyone else. All other suicidal people in this country are entitled to HELP and killings and suicide facilitators are prosecuted heavily.
I also have reply to my letter from the DPP's office, which I'll tell you more about later, for now, lets just say I'm not impressed and have requested a meeting. In short, it seems this department is quite content to back out of protecting some human lives equally.
It's not nice being a disabled person today looking around me, wondering which four in every five citizens is happy to kill a relative.. wondering which four of my five relatives would be happy to kill me. I am living in a country which is happy to make it easier to kill the old and sick, whilst absolutely not caring what the majority of people this law would put at risk have to say on the matter. Even though the scientific evidence (as opposed to the imaginings of most of the British non-disabled public) shows that people concerned don't want or need this law - apart from a very few poster children whose fear, misery and internalised oppression the euthanasia movement are taking advantage of.
The DPP is trying to keep everyone's eye distracted to the compelling idea that the person must really want it - in order to brush past the simple unequal idea that it's ok to kill some suicidal people and not others. It's not even a clever smokescreen, but the widespread public belief that it's ok to treat the lives of disabled and sick people as less worthy is so acceptable now, people this doesn't directly affect are quite happy with this - no smoke is needed, permission to regard some of us as disposable is now officially granted.
I suspect the DPP has created a back-door right to kill, simply to cover his backside having inexcusably allowed so many killers and facilitaors to walk free.
It's hateful - if we were bringing in this law for another specific sector of society surely people wouldn't tolerate it, wouldn't they be able to see? It is a deep rooted prejudice and lack of care leading 'the healthy' to regard so many of us as useless eaters fit for death. Soon they'll be braying for further 'equality' so more of us could be killed instead of supported.
It's a day of disgrace and outright lies - a special right to be killed is surely, obviously not equality. It's discrimination.. murderous and lethal.. a kind of state approved hate speech inciting people to kill the depressed. A day of us disabled being officially awarded a lesser right to live, the most fundamental right of all. It's enough to make anyone feel suicidal, to have our lives regarded as of so much less importance.
These laws are being fought for by people with an eugenic agenda and four fifths of a non-disabled public who wish to avoid their duty of care to their loved ones - who say they actually want to kill them. The same people have already been dumping their old and sick in profit-making institutions which stink of urine for a long time now. Now they've convinced themselves it's more ethical to save the money and just spend it on a coffin.
Shame on Britain.
If you read this, please share it with someone else. Even if you don't agree, don't you agree all sides of the debate should be heard?
** surprising breaking news **
added at 1pm
If you want a full copy of Director of Public Prosecutions guidelines on assisting suicide, message me your email address - I just got sent one by Roger Daw, at the DPP's office.
It seems, quite differently to the draft which came earlier, he has unexpectedly taken out the reference to impairment/health and Mr Daw says "I hope you will approve of the approach adopted in this Final Policy. (I am about to read the full thing so can't confirm, anything yet, but given that this is a clarification on how people get away with murder, against only one sector of society, it's pretty unlikely).
Is this a victory for disabled people.. have the public in response to their consultation talked him round? Does this mean now anyone can help anyone commit suicide? I find that unlikely. And who else would this law affect except the only community considered (impossibly) to have improved lives via death? Who else can be killed for their own good?
I look forward to finding out and I'll be making my views known about the content of the guidelines tomorrow.**next day update**
My response to the guidelines is in today's The Independent newspaper, which is also available online, here http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com
References:
Gordon Brown: don't legalise assisted suicide
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopi"A poll for The Daily Telegraph found last month that four out of five people believed that relatives should be allowed to help terminally ill loved ones take their own lives."
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polemista : (no subject) [+1] - marie_3 : (no subject) [+1]
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- (Anonymous) : clair lewis [+1]
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Comments
Thanks for saying this outloud as it gives me an opportunity to answer this heckle for all to see again, it's one of my favourite myths.
The points you raise have been previously answered elsewhere, if you are really so interested in my (lack of) spiritual background:
http://clairlewis.livejournal.com/1
Animals? You believe in awarding sick/disabled people the rights of a dog, instead of the rights everyone else is entitled to under the Human Rights Act? Shame on me?
Do you think we are a different species?
And yes, I do get very irritated by the idea that religious people are automatically incapable of holding any kind of reasoned views at all and must be instantly dismissed. For example when a bishop says that allowing one person to take the life of another is a very dangerous step for society to take I don't think that's really a terribly shocking and controversial position to hold, even if you disagree, yet somehow because it's a bishop it's dangerous irrational dogmatism that must be opposed. But that's a wider and much more difficult battle, and as so many people are, unfortunately, likely to automatically side against anything they perceive as religiously motivated, it's the astonishingly widely-held view that religious opposition is the *only* opposition to assisted suicide - I've so often seen people comment that if we didn't have an established church it would be legal already - that I am much more concerned about countering at the moment. The interfering religious people narrative is such a familiar one to the media, though, that it's very difficult to stop this issue simply being slotted in there too. It's so frustrating because I just don't know how you break through against that.
I guess we keep trying to be heard as another opposition alongside, different, but in agreement.
You know that I'm mainly for assisted suicide,or at least the availability of the choice, but even THAT makes no sense to me whatsoever! Grrr.
What a great piece this is. There are things that deserve our outrage. This is one.
And what a coup, the AG writing to you with a proposed amendment!
I also applaud the link you make between low-quality for-profit nursing homes and this law. Market values in a 'care industry ' commodify people and drives out real care. 'Make them go away' is completely coherent with a throw-away consumer society.
I write from Australia where one state or other almost permanently have a euthanasia law up for Parliamentary debate.
I also find the automatic religious inference, and the putting-dog-out-of-its-'misery'-so-why-n
If you are interested in my 2003 (not a lot of new water has gone under the bridge) thesis of a cross-cultural study of attitudes held by people with disabilities (mainly quadriplegia) towards euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide you can get it here: http://adt.caul.edu.au/homesearch/find/?r
Maybe there is something of interest there.
Cheers
Erik
I have a piece into a national newspaper today and I am so delighted - please see here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co
And what about the situation across the Channel? (I am a Dutch-born Australian guy with quadriplegia). No slippery slope of course: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/20
Of course you may list my thesis as a resource, it is a publicly available link, saying much of what you appear to say: interdependence... I say it is the water in which we swim but we don't see it so it is 'not real' Many people with disabilities know particularly well the reality of interdependence and by extension, good supportive relationships. But still support 'euthanasia'. My conclusions are in my thesis.
Cheers
Erik
I just cant get my head around clair lewis. while she campaigns for the rights of the disabled to live, abhorring assisted suicide, euthanasia etc. with or without the consent of the victim, she also vies for the right of sadomachochists to sexually assault one another as the definition states, sa·do·mas·o·chism (sd-ms-kzm, sd-)
n.
The combination of sadism and masochism, in particular the deriving of pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting or submitting to physical or emotional abuse on each other whether with consent or not. Beats me. john murphy
I am National Convenor of Consenting Adult Action Network ( http://www.caan.org.uk/ ). This is our position statement:
"We believe in the right of consenting adults to make their own sexual choices, in respect of what they do, see and enjoy alone or with other consenting adults, unhindered and unfettered by government."
"We believe that it is not the business of government to intrude into the sex lives of consenting adults."
I think that's pretty clear. For further information about my position on these issues, which is what brought me into sexuality rights campaigning, please see this on the Backlash website:
http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/wv_cl
FYI - 'clair lewis' (CAAN really, I am sure) is apparentl;y a finalist for 'Campaigner of the year' at the Erotic Awards:
http://www.erotic-awards.co.uk/
Which is organised by people from the Sexual Freedom Colaition:
http://www.sfc.org.uk/
If you want to debate raise your base level and let's talk. simply, the root of the apparent contradiction is the difference between having a real choice and not.