Assisted suicide laws set up an ableist two-tier system, where some people get suicide prevention and others, namely those with life-threatening disabilities, get suicide assistance. This results in death to the devalued group. Nothing could be more discriminatory.
A man named Michael Hickson died on June 11, 2020. He was denied food an fluids for 6 days. He was a Black man. His death occurred in a climate of national discussion about the killing of Black men. His wife, Melissa, has ample evidence that his death was deliberate and was the result of prejudice. Yet almost no stories in the mainstream media mention his death and outrage is coming from the disability rights movement and a few ‘shocked’ ethicists. Michael was quadriplegic.
Michael’s life was ended because he was disabled. This much is obvious from the recording that Melissa has of a physician callously ‘able-splaining’ the fact that he would kill her husband because he believed Michael had no ‘quality of life.’ Disability advocates have long known that ‘quality of life’ is code for BDTD- Better Dead Than Disabled.
In each of the four (4) stories about Michael’s death that I found in mainstream media (as of July 4), there are flat denials by the hospital that Michael was discriminated against because of disability. Not one reporter used the tapes to question that denial. There was also no attempt to contact a disability rights organization (like Not Dead Yet)…
Read more at Not Dead Yet…