Tea at Trianon: What Assisted Suicide Tells People with Disabilities

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 6, 2021

What Assisted Suicide Tells People with Disabilities

From The Iona Institute:

The Oireachtas Justice Committee discussed the topic of assisted suicide/euthanasia in private session during the week. We wonder if the members considered concerns raised by disability rights groups internationally about such laws affect them, the signal it sends that their lives are less worth living than those of fully healthy people.

Four United Nations Rapporteurs on human rights have expressed their concerns in recent times about the impact that euthanasia and assisted suicide laws have on disabled people and their families.

In February 2020, during the presentation of her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, the United Nation Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, Catalina Devandas, said: “If assisted dying is made available for persons with health conditions or impairments, but who are not terminally ill, a social assumption could be made that it is better to be dead than to live with a disability. People have the right to live and to die with dignity, but we cannot accept that people choose to end their lives because of social stigma, isolation or lack of access to personal assistance or disability-related services.”

She warned that those laws, and also medical practices such as prenatal screening, may “revive eugenics ideas” because of the effect they have on those who are considered unfit. The strongest and more able are favoured while the vulnerable are pressured by society to request euthanasia. Such concerns are shared by many disabled persons organisations that are actively campaigning against the introduction of laws legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide.
For instance, the Independent Living Movement Ireland have criticised the assisted suicide Bill proposed by far-left TD, Gino Kenny. They wrote in their submission to the Oireachtas Justice Committee: “Many disabled people are against the Bill as it could become a ‘slippery slope’ moving from dying with dignity to assisted suicide, where the conversation changes from people who are terminally ill to people choosing to end their lives, which in other jurisdictions has often focused on people with impairments, who without the supports to live a free full life feel that their lives are not worth living. There are fears which are real and justified by very recent history.”

Three more UN human rights experts have spoken against euthanasia for disabled people recently. In January this year, Gerard Quinn ( Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities), Olivier De Schutter (Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights) and Claudia Mahler (Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons) have together voiced their alarm at the growing trend in Western countries to enact legislation enabling access to so-called “medically assisted dying” based on disabling conditions, which would include old age or dementia. (Read more.)