MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Bigotry and the Murder of Terri Schiavo

• Posted by Beth on March 28th, 2005 filed in General, Pro-Life, Schiavo    

OK, I know I said I was too lazy to write, but I have to do this.

Via Powerline (no, really), an article from the Harvard Crimson (read it all) by a person who acutely feels the sick truth about the Terri Schiavo situation:

Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a severely disabled woman, is being starved and dehydrated to death in the name of supposed “dignity.”

Ahh, yes, “dignity.” The overriding concern of bioethicists again. ‘Cause you know, those disabled “people” are so undignified.

The reason for this public support of removal from ordinary sustenance, I believe, is not that most people understand or care about Terri Schiavo. Like many others with disabilities, I believe that the American public, to one degree or another, holds that disabled people are better off dead. To put it in a simpler way, many Americans are bigots. A close examination of the facts of the Schiavo case reveals not a case of difficult decisions but a basic test of this country’s decency.

I agree with this 100%. People need to take a serious look at their reasons for saying “I wouldn’t want to live like that.” If there’s one thing that has PISSED ME OFF more than anything, it’s that statement alone. I am truly infuriated by people who think their lives are so much better than the next person’s because they’re in better health. These people have no idea what it’s like to be disabled, even mildly disabled, but they THINK they do.
More:

Besides being disabled, Schiavo and I have something important in common, that is, someone attempted to terminate my life by removing my endotracheal tube during resuscitation in my first hour of life. This was a quality-of-life decision: I was simply taking too long to breathe on my own, and the person who pulled the tube believed I would be severely disabled if I lived, since lack of oxygen causes cerebral palsy. (I was saved by my family doctor inserting another tube as quickly as possible.) The point of this is not that I ended up at Harvard and Schiavo did not, as some people would undoubtedly conclude. The point is that society already believes to some degree that it is acceptable to murder disabled people.

EXACTLY.

Here’s why I am so angry about this–a personal story. My ex-husband’s mother is in a nursing home because she has multiple sclerosis (I won’t even get into my opinion about that situation, but I’m sure some of my regular readers can guess what it is). One argument my ex and I could never reconcile was his saying “if I’m ever like that, I’d want to die.” This he said in referring to his own MOTHER. Keep in mind, she still has full cognition and can still eat, but has to be “spoon-fed” due to her paralysis. But she’s a “burden” to the family (hence her being in a nursing home), and therefore her life is worthless, I guess.

Some of you know that in 1996 I began a long period of my own medical problems. I was medically retired from the Air Force after I had surgery for the first time to remove a nasty spinal cord tumor that inexplicably had not disabled me yet beyond occasionally tripping on things just a little bit more than seemed normal. Most people, even those I worked with, would never even notice it. Since the first operation, I’ve had six more operations as the tumor has come back, plus ten months of chemotherapy and radiation. Every single doctor I’ve seen for this has remarked about their shock that I can still walk–all said it was likely I would be wheelchair-bound, if not DEAD.

I’m fine now, but I do have difficulty walking (although I still do unassisted) and can’t run. I also am not supposed to lift anything heavy, although as a single parent I don’t have a lot of choice most of the time, and when I was married, I had to depend on my ex to do a lot of things after this happened, like carry in the groceries and other things, like give me a hand to help me up if I tripped and fell. I didn’t even need him to take care of me, I just needed help with some things.

Burdensome.

And…disposed of.

So yes, I know (to a far lesser extent) what being a “burden” is about. Or maybe not that much lesser extent, since my ex couldn’t even deal with a few minor inconveniences and what I know for a fact was an embarrassment to him (I heard “what the fark, you look like you’re drunk” on more than a few occasions when I fell), what with my limping walk and need to walk carefully so I wouldn’t trip and fall. Obviously, the divorce was his loss, not mine.

Let me make something absolutely clear. That period of my life has made me a better person, and it’s given me serenity, strength, and courage–and most of all, gratitude for every bit of life itself. Don’t dare have pity–there is nothing whatsoever for which I should be pitied. Those who have overcome adversity will understand what I’m talking about. And I’m not alone in thinking this–I’ve known other people with far greater disabilites than my “inconvenience” (as I prefer to call it in my case) who have wonderful lives filled with love and happiness. Yet those who only see them from a distance might pity them too, and say “I wouldn’t want to live like that.”

I KNOW everyone on the side of Terri Schiavo’s “right to die” isn’t this kind of extremely selfish person, but make no mistake, I see it clearly in her husband. I see it clearly in some of the “right to die” people, too. Pardon me for having an opinion about what kind of people the “I wouldn’t want to live like that” crowd consists of, but my opinion comes from knowing just a little about what being “a burden” can feel like. So I ask those of you of this mindset, when it comes down to it, are you going to be there for YOUR spouse “in sickness and in health”? What about your parents or your children? Will YOU dispose of your burdens like a weakling, or will you toughen up and shoulder them?

Be honest–do you think the disabled are a BURDEN to society and to you? Do you think that not wanting to “be a burden” means a person would rather be DEAD? I don’t want to be a burden–but if I am burdensome to you, then please leave; I don’t need you around. But I don’t want to die. And so I believe that if the Michael Schiavos of the world are burdened, they should leave their loved ones alone and let the stronger people carry the load and give them the love they deserve as any other human being. The only reason Terri Schiavo would be miserable where one wouldn’t want to “live like that” is because of the way Michael Schiavo has deemed her worthless and burdensome.

“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.”
—a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide