Better Dead Than Disabled???

A one year old boy, who could have a tracheotomy, be taken home from the hospital and live his life, may have his ventilator removed at the wishes of his mother and the HOSPITAL TRUST PAYING FOR HIS CARE, because his severe physical disability has been deemed 'intolerable suffering'. His father disagrees and is fighting for his son's life.

See UK Court to Rule Whether Baby Better Off Dead Than Disabled from the blog Secondhand Smoke by Wesley J. Smith.

Natural Instinct

My mother chose not to abort me. She could have, for I was born after 1973, the year abortions became legal.

Had she known that 32 years after my birth, I would have a LOT of needs, that I would have struggled with obesity, identity issues, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, going to school, fighting with my sisters, and not making my bed in the morning, should she have considered abortion? Is she a hero for not? Is she a fool for not?

It's a natural instinct for a mother to protect her child from the womb on. It's sad when doctors, society, and fear keep a mother from doing what's natural. Palin did what was natural for a mother to do when she was pregnant with her son. 'Special' needs and all. It's not heroic. It's what a mother does. My mother taught me this.

Who's Who?

From the video:

In a collective decision, every voice counts, either by its rhetoric or by its silence.

Terri Schiavo's Family Launches New Radio Program

Terri Schiavo's Family Launches New Radio Program

Oh, the Irony

Girl Once Comatose and Scheduled for Euthanasia Will Testify Against Attacker

Two and half years ago, Haleigh Poutre, now 14, was brutally beaten into a coma. After custody was taken from her stepfather, the man who beat her nearly to death, she was made a ward of the state of Massachusetts. The state sought to remove her life support only six days after obtaining custody. Her stepfather fought to keep her alive, probably to avoid murder charges, and the slowness of the court system gave Haleigh time to start showing signs of alertness.

From the article:

Fortunately for Haleigh, the slowness of the court appeals process spared her
life. The court made its final decision to euthanize her in January, 2006, by
which time she was showing signs of alertness. Just days before doctors were
going to remove her life support systems she began breathing on her own, and the
Department of Social Services halted plans to remove her feeding tube.

Haleigh is now in rehabilitation and is enrolled at the day school at
Franciscan Hospital for Children. She can communicate by using a keyboard and
computer and can speak some words.

The irony in this case is that Jason Strickland, who faces multiple assault charges,
but in the long run ultimately saved Haleigh's life, may be convicted by Haleigh's testimony against him, while the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, which sought to kill her after being told she wouldn't have a "meaningful" life, won't be at court.

Just As I Am

It seems those with disabilities have been a part of us, a part of the church, all along. In our music, of all things. Three examples:




William Cowper





Charlotte Elliot - Just As I Am





Fanny Crosby

Obama Calls Vote to Help Terri Schiavo Biggest Mistake

From Citizenlink.com:

Obama Calls Vote to Help Terri Schiavo Biggest Mistake

by Jennifer Mesko, managing editor
'Whether it's abortion or end-of-life issues, he's been consistently anti-life.'

During the 20th Democratic presidential debate Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Barack
Obama said the one vote he would take back was his 2005 U.S. Senate vote to help
save the life of Terri Schiavo, a brain-injured Florida woman.

"We adjourned with a unanimous agreement that eventually allowed
Congress to interject itself into that decision-making process of the families,"
Obama said. "It wasn't something I was comfortable with, but it was not
something that I stood on the floor and stopped. And I think that was a
mistake."

Schiavo was not dying nor terminally ill; she was not brain-dead nor in
a coma. Yet for seven years, her husband, Michael, sought to have her feeding
tube removed. Congress intervened toward the end, but it was not enough. Schiavo
died March 31, 2005, after 13 days of court-ordered dehydration and starvation.

Jill Stanek, a pro-life speaker and blogger, called Obama "utterly pro-death."

"He lives in 'opposite world,' where he is an environmentalist,
to the extreme, and very pro-animal," she said. "But when it comes to the
sanctity of human life, he takes every stand against it, up to, and including,
babies who have been aborted alive.

"His priorities are completely unintelligible."

When asked Tuesday which vote she would take back, Sen. Hillary Clinton,
D-N.Y., said she would not vote for the Iraq war again.

Tuesday wasn't the first time Obama talked about his "mistake."

During an April 2007 debate, he said: "I think professionally the
biggest mistake that I made was when I first arrived in the Senate. There was a
debate about Terri Schiavo, and a lot of us, including me, left the Senate with
a bill that allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn't have.”

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said
Obama has been disingenuous.

"How can Obama reconcile his cavalier dismissal of Terri Schiavo's
predicament as a 'family matter,' when he has stated he wants to appoint judges
who are 'going to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process,
the outsider, the minority, those who are vulnerable, those who don't have a lot
of clout'?

"Whether it's abortion or end-of-life issues," Hausknecht said, "he's
been consistently anti-life."

Walgreens Embraces Employees With Disabilities

From CBN News

Walgreens Embraces Employees With Disabilities

Viable People

From LifeSite:

Disabled Children Better Off Aborted: House of Lords Peeress

By Hilary White

LONDON, February 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Seriously disabled
children should be considered non-persons and would be better off having been
aborted, according to a Peer speaking in the House of Lords Tuesday. Attempting
to couch her assertion in terms of children's "rights", Molly Baroness Meacher
told the Lords that children born with severe disabilities are "not viable
people".

The comments came as the Lords debated an amendment to the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, put forward by Lady Swinton, Baroness Masham
of Ilton, that would have protected unborn disabled children from abortion after
the 24 week gestational time limit. The amendment was defeated by 89 votes to
22.

Under Britain's abortion law, children judged to have some form of
disability, including such comparatively minor disabilities as club foot or
cleft palate, can be aborted up to the time of natural birth.

The article continues:

Others in the Lords, however, do not share Baroness Meacher's extreme form
of eugenic thinking. Robert Shirley, Lord Ferrers, said he was "apprehensive"
about abortion at early stages "because you are destroying some form of life",
and "deeply apprehensive" about abortion in later stages, since it is "difficult
to tell...when [the child] becomes a human being with a soul."

Lord Ferrers said he hoped the amendment would pass, "because I do not
think it right that human beings should decide at one moment that this child,
who is a human being, should not be born."

Baroness Tonge, a leading supporter of the Voluntary Euthanasia
Society, said that the children referred to were not "disabled human beings" but
"grossly abnormal human beings". Citing the "grotesque appearance" of children
with anencephaly, Tonge said, "many of those whom I have seen bear little
resemblance to human beings."

But Baroness Williams of Crosby said the permission to kill the
disabled before birth is at odds with the nation's efforts to help disabled
people throughout their lives. "We have a society where once people are born we
increasingly go to extraordinary lengths to look after them if they are
disabled."

"One of the things that really frightens me is that, if we pick out the
potentially disabled at the age of 25 or 26 weeks, we will sooner or later
develop an attitude towards the severely disabled who have been disabled since
birth," she said.

Contact:
Molly Baroness Meacher
The House of Lords,
London, SW1A 0PW
U.K.

"To be ignorant and simple now- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground- would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." -C.S. Lewis

The Use of Verbs

What would the world be like without Down syndrome? I don't know. What would the world like without the people who have Down syndrome living in it? How have they contributed to society? I can't say.

I can say how my life personally has been affected by people with Downs. Most of the people I know personally who have had Down syndrome and I have made friends. As with all friendships, some of these friendships came easily and others took a lot of work. Either way, through our friendships, I learned things like how to trust people who said they loved me, and I learned that's it's really okay to laugh and be silly sometimes. Something I really needed to learn.

I wonder why it matters. I wonder why it matters what life would be like without Down syndrome and what life would be like without people who have Down syndrome. I wonder why it matters what people with Down syndrome have contributed to society?

No one has ever looked at me, save perhaps my father in moments of frustration and myself in moments of despair, and pondered the question, "What does Julie contribute?" "What good does her 'kind' do?"

Yet, such questions come up when making a case for life. When deciding to terminate a pregnancy when tests show the child will have developmental disabilities or when deciding, as it is becoming legal here in the west, to euthanize an infant with a severe disability or illness. Those of us defending us these children and their right to life are quick to give our western answers which base their right to existence on what they can contribute to society. What they can 'do' and 'give'. These are action verbs, if I remember my 4th grade grammar.

Instead, though, I wonder if our arguments for the right to exist shouldn't be based on being verbs. If we shouldn't understand for ourselves first, before we 'preach' to others, that our right to exist, all of ours, is based on who we are. Or even that we are.

Peter Singer and other such 'ethicists', seem to be bypassing the argument of what one can contribute to society, anyway. They are attacking directly one's personhood. They are defining personhood based on whether or not one is aware of his existence and mortality.

So, they declare that infants, all infants, healthy or not, people with severe or profound cognitive disabilities, those in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, etc., though perhaps human, aren't really a person. Therefore, if the human is not really a person, euthanasia is very much ethical.

Also, for parents and doctors who really care about children born or who will be born with severe disabilities or illness, they are not so much concerned with what the child can contribute but with the child's potential suffering. They have feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, despair, fear of the unknown, and guilt. In their grief over their child's potential suffering, parents can be swayed by the thought that the child will be better off if they let him/her die by the hand of their trusted doctor.

How do we help those parents make a choice for life? I'm asking because I don't know. While we passionately know that the child has a right to exist, how do we lovingly convey to parents that their child is better off alive and suffering than dead and at peace?

Is the child better off suffering than dead? Who are we to decide that the child must suffer? Yet, who are we to decide that death at the hands of doctors is the answer to suffering?

I think we should put down our protest signs, step out of the marching lines, with all due respect to the pro-life activists who have done much for the cause of life, and find a way to come along side suffering parents. Help them find hope because there is hope in the midst of suffering. Help them by enjoying and appreciating their child for who he/she is.

I think we should come along side those with disabilities and illness. It is through relationship with them that we will come to understand that most of their suffering does not come from their disability or illness. But rather their reception from the rest of society of prejudice, rejection, untold amounts of abuses, and the suspicion and judgment by some of us of their very existence.

Thoughts on Identity

I like the freedom I have found, which actually I've always had, to decide for myself how I want to be defined. I like choosing for myself with Whom and with what I will identify.

That's not to say that there is no Truth in who I am. The truth, the absolute truth, is I am created by God for relationship with God in the image and likeness of God.

I like the freedom to choose that Truth. I like the freedom to decide for myself to identify with Christ and allow Him to transform my identity.

I like that freedom verses being defined by others who and what I should be. Verses being defined by others by my abilities and disabilities. Verses being defined by my faults and gifts.

I read a post at Disabled Christianity this morning which talked about a woman who, when asked if she had a disability, replied, "I used to have Down syndrome." To her people with Down syndrome were treated differently and ostracized. However, at this point in her life she is a part of things. She's a part of her church. She sees herself as a "normal human adult", as she would say. Therefore, in her conclusion, she must not have Down syndrome anymore.

I suppose it would be good if she recognized that, yes, she does have Down syndrome and learn that there is no shame in that and that it doesn't make her 'different'. It would be just as good if the rest of us learned that, too- if the rest of us learned that men and women with Down syndrome are, indeed, "normal human adults".

But I think it's also very good that she is choosing her own identity and does not define herself by her disability. She has that right to decide for herself whether or not to identify with her Down syndrome. A "normal human adult' is a valid self-definition.

Synagogues Opening Minds and Doors

From the article, "Opening minds, and Congregation Doors, to the Disabled" by Audrey Dutton :

"We were really trying to find a vehicle that would be helpful in making positive changes in the community in the area of having congregations be more welcoming
and more inclusive,” said Lenore Layman, special needs and disability services
director at the partnership.

The partnership’s goal was to ‘‘create a culture of inclusiveness” for disabled people and their families — a culture that many synagogues are now adopting, according to Layman.

‘‘There’s been so much in the secular world” that regulates disabled access on a physical level, Layman said. Layman said the ‘‘culture” of inclusion — how to speak to someone who is disabled, include them and accommodate their needs — is
something all houses of worship should work to create.

People First Language

People First Language is just what it sounds like- putting the person first in describing a person with disabilities. Examples would include saying:

• person with a disability vs. disabled person


• woman with a developmental disability, man with a cognitive disability vs. mentally retarded man/woman


• 'He has Down Syndrome vs. 'He is Downs'


• 'She has a learning disability' vs. 'She's learning disabled'


• woman with a mental illness, man who has Schizophrenia' vs. 'She's mentally ill, He's schizophrenic'


• man who uses a wheelchair vs. wheelchair-bound, confined to a wheelchair

Important to note: People First Language is not law. Some people with disabilities do not use this language, or at least some aspects of it.

I actually use People First Language for myself, even more than for those I don't want to offend. I am predisposed, you see, to see the weakness first in the people around me, and, therefore, I limit people in my own prejudices regarding disability, race, height, you name it. Using People First Language has helped me differentiate between the people around me and their weaknesses (and strengths).

Save Charlotte

Doctors and judges, against her parents' wishes, refusing care for a child because they judge her to be suffering too much.

Charlotte Wyatt's website: http://savecharlotte.com/

An old video: from MSN

"...We will continue to fight for her all the way as we believe that under any circumstances you don't judge on an innocent childs life " --Darren Wyatt (Charlotte's Dad)

Not Brain Dead

"TAMPA, Fla., Nov. 19 /Christian Newswire/ -- Yesterday on This Week, George Stephanopoulos, in an interview with Senator Fred Thompson, commented that Terri Schiavo's autopsy proved she was "brain dead." The New York Times also reported on this interview, repeating that the autopsy proved Terri was "brain dead."

This is patently false and Terri's family is requesting that the media immediately stop using this offensive and inaccurate expression to describe her condition."

Read the rest of the story here.

Terri's Day

"NEW YORK, Dec. 10 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation and Priests for Life have jointly announced the establishment of the "International Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Terri Schindler Schiavo, and All of Our Vulnerable Brothers and Sisters" ("Terri's Day"), to be observed each year on March 31, the date of Terri's death.

The purpose of the day, the groups explained, is to foster education, prayer, and activism regarding discrimination against the disabled, and advocacy for people in situations similar to what Terri and her family faced."

Read the rest of the story here.