Women who keep their disabled babies face coercion, discrimination and disdain

Last Monday I attended the second oral evidence session of the Parliamentary ‘Inquiry into Abortion on the Grounds of Disability’ (more background here)

The current law permits an abortion to take place up to birth (40 weeks) if prenatal tests indicate that the child may be disabled when born. There is a legal limit of 24 weeks for abortions on other grounds. 

Abortions are currently permitted at any time up to and including birth if there is a ‘substantial risk’ that the child might be born ‘seriously handicapped’. The law does not define these criteria and they are broadly interpreted.

This ground for abortion is known as Ground E in practice and, according to Department of Health statistics, 2,307 ‘Ground E’ abortions were carried out in 2011.

The Equality Act 2010 protects disabled people from discrimination. The Act prohibits discrimination arising from a disability by preventing one person from treating another less favourably because of their disability. 

The current abortion law thereby discriminates against disabled babies in two ways.

First, it has a different upper limit for disabled babies and babies without disability (40 and 24 weeks respectively). Second, it allows for some disabled babies to be aborted under ground E (those who will be born with a ‘serious’ handicap) but not others.

Last Monday we heard evidence at the inquiry from disability rights activists, parents of children born with disabilities and support groups for affected families.

There were several strong themes that emerged.

First, there seemed to be very little support or information available for families who wanted to keep their babies, as opposed to having them aborted.

Second, there was a strong presumption from doctors that parents with disabled children would choose to have them aborted.

Third, there was a huge amount of subtle or direct pressure placed on parents who decided not to abort. They were repeatedly asked to reconsider their decisions and treated like pariahs – in short they were discriminated against.

It is just this sort of pressure that has led some commentators to talk about abortion for disability as a ‘coercive offer’. And there is a growing literature of personal testimonies around this issue.

Two powerful recent books on the subject are ‘Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics’ by Melinda Tankard Reist and ‘A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby's Life Is Expected to Be Brief’ by Amy Kubelbeck.

‘Defiant Birth’ tells the personal stories of women who have resisted ‘medical eugenics’ and dared to challenge the utilitarian medical model/mindset - women who were told they shouldn't have babies because of perceived disability in themselves, or shouldn't have babies because of some imperfection in the child. 

'They have confronted the stigma of disability and in the face of silent disapproval and even open hostility, had their babies anyway, in the belief that all life is valuable and that some are not more worthy of it than others.

Disparaged and treated as pariahs for departing from accepted medical wisdom they have chosen non-compliance with medical/social prejudice and defiantly said yes to their babies, and no to the cult of bodily perfection.'

This is a controversial book that looks critically at the way in which medical eugenics is being used as a contemporary form of social engineering. Reist has written a strongly argued and trenchant introduction setting out the issues, among them the idea that having children is about ‘quality control and the paradigm of perfection.’

‘Defiant Birth’ explores what is means to have ‘less-than-perfect pregnancies’ and ‘genetically different babies.’ People with disabilities have been raising these issues for many years, but on the whole they remain silent and marginalised in the media.

Several parents recount the joy and love they have experienced with their 'abnormal' babies, including children with Down syndrome and achondroplasia ('dwarfism'). The book also has inspiring stories told by parents with their own significant illnesses and disabilities, including cerebral palsy.

Many write of the pressure, and even blame, from family, friends and professionals, to choose termination, justified as saving their children from suffering. This perspective is challenged by words of those with disabilities. Abortion is also justified to save the community from future costs, which is the fundamental (and profoundly concerning) reason for prenatal testing for abnormalities.

The stories also challenge the idea that allowing a baby with a fatal abnormality to survive to birth will be intolerably traumatic for the family. As mother Teresa Streckfuss poignantly writes about her son, who died 24 hours after birth from anencephaly:

‘Someone asked us after Benedict died, was it worth it? Oh yes! For the chance to hold him and see him and to love him before letting him go. For the chance for our children to see that we would never stop loving them, regardless of their imperfections. Children are always a blessing, even if they don't stay very long.’

The question of babies with disabilities incompatible with life outside the womb is explored more fully in ‘A Gift of Time’. The author Amy Kuebelbeck is a former reporter and editor for the Associated Press and previously wrote about her experience losing a child in ‘Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby’s Brief Life’.

The book is a gentle and practical guide for parents who decide to continue their pregnancy knowing that their baby's life will be brief.

When prenatal testing reveals that an unborn child is expected to die before or shortly after birth, some parents will choose to proceed with the pregnancy and to welcome their child into the world. With compassion and support, ‘A Gift of Time’ walks them step-by-step through this challenging and emotional experience—from the infant's life-limiting prenatal diagnosis and the decision to have the baby to coping with the pregnancy and making plans for the baby’s birth and death.

The book also offers inspiration and reassurance through the memories of numerous parents who have loved a child who did not survive. Their moving experiences are stories of grief—and of hope. Their anguish over the prenatal diagnosis turns to joy and love during the birth of their child and to gratitude and peace when reflecting on their baby’s short life.

‘A gift of life’ is also featured on the ‘Perinatal Hospice’ website, which provides resources and support for those having to care for a dying baby.

CMF previously published a powerful testimony of a Christian psychiatrist who faced just this situation under the title ‘A life Precious to God’ and I have blogged previously about a similar more recent story.

Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement said, ‘You matter because you are you, and you matter until the last moment of your life.’

I pray that the testimonies in these two books and this parliamentary inquiry will help lead us to a point as a society where we are prepared to treat disabled babies, these most vulnerable of human beings, with the honour, respect, love and protection that they deserve and to give more information and support to their parents and families.

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Survival of twins born at 23 weeks and new Inquiry into abortion for disability reopen debate on abortion upper limits

When twins Mackenzie and Cameron Glover were born 17 weeks prematurely on 17 June last year, they were so tiny that their mother said they could ‘fit inside a pint glass’.

Now, after a lengthy battle for life against the most astonishing odds, the boys, born at just 23 weeks and three days gestation, have become one of the most premature sets of twins ever to survive in the UK.

Their mother Pam says her miraculous boys fill her with wonder – but she is left angry and mystified that the law continues to permit the abortion of babies older than her sons were at birth.

Pam said: ‘For us now, the idea that it’s possible to abort a child up to 24 weeks – older than Cameron and Mackenzie were – just doesn’t bear thinking about.’

The story, reported in the Daily Mail this week, has reopened the debate about abortion time limits.

It comes just as Fiona Bruce MP launches a parliamentary inquiry into abortion for disability which will examine the law, professional guidance and information and support given to parents.

Disabled babies can be aborted right up until the time of birth and in 2011, according to Department of Health statistics, 146 were aborted after 24 weeks.

In all 2,307 abortions were carried out in 2011 under Abortion Act 1967 Ground E, for disability. This included more than 500 abortions for babies with Down’s Syndrome although the real number may well be twice as high.

Abortion industry leader Ann Furedi of BPAS has reacted strongly against the consultation saying that abortion should be a women’s choice.

However she has already come in for sharp criticism from Saving Downs, a charity advocating for children with Down’s syndrome, which has welcomed the inquiry saying that it is ‘exactly what the disability community needs: the removal of discriminatory laws against the disabled’.

Last year Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said that he personally favoured a lowering of the upper limit for aborting non-disabled babies to 12 weeks.

He is not alone. 13 of the current 16 Tory MPs in cabinet actually voted for a lowering of the limit in 2008 when the issue was last debated – including 7 for 20 weeks, 2 for 16 weeks and 3 for 12 weeks.

There are currently 16 countries in Europe which have upper limits of 10-12 weeks and that Britain has one of the highest upper limits and highest abortion rates in Europe.

Public and parliamentary opinion is changing on abortion for three main reasons – 4D ultrasounds, debates about fetal sentience and premature babies like the Olivers surviving below 24 weeks in neonatal units.

All this is increasing awareness about the ‘humanity of the pre-born baby’ and heightening concerns about abortion.

Ultimately societies will be judged by the way they treat the most vulnerable, and there is no one more vulnerable, more innocent and killed in greater numbers than a preborn baby.

Last year I was one of nine signatories to a letter to the Telegraph describing the practice of aborting babies for disability as a form of ‘eugenics’ and arguing that the present law is deeply hypocritical and discriminatory.

This consultation will be an opportunity for disabled people and their advocates to speak out against this practice and possibly bring some much needed reform.

You have read this article Abortion / Disability / prematurity with the title Disability. You can bookmark this page URL https://celebrityunitedking.blogspot.com/2013/02/survival-of-twins-born-at-23-weeks-and.html. Thanks!

Current law supports eugenic abortion for disabled people – our letter in today’s Daily Telegraph

I am one of nine joint signatories to a letter in the Daily Telegraph today arguing that the success of the Paralympics should trigger a rethink of Britain’s abortion laws to make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy solely on grounds that a child will be born disabled.

We describe the practice of aborting foetuses on physical grounds as a form of ‘eugenics’ and say that while pregnancies can be terminated even up to 40 weeks on physical grounds in certain circumstances, the moment the child is born a ‘moral volte-face’ is performed and the official approach is ‘full of compassion’.

This we argue is deeply hypocritical and discriminatory.

Abortion is legal in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy in Britain if the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s mental or physical health greater than that from having an abortion. But after 24 weeks, an abortion is allowed only if there is substantial risk of ‘serious’ physical or mental abnormality.

The letter is the basis of a long article in the same issue of the paper which is well worth reading.

The full letter (accessible on Telegraph website – you need to scroll down from here) is titled ‘Disability Hypocrisy’ and reads as follows :

Disability Hypocrisy

SIR – A special-needs child in the womb can be aborted at up to 40 weeks. But once he or she is born, we do a moral volte-face and become full of compassion.

The recent Paralympics made this contradiction yet more glaring. The athletes produced such astonishing examples of courage and triumph over disability that we now have to rethink what we mean by ‘disabled’ and ‘able’.

Eugenic abortion is bad medicine. Killing people with disabilities, rather than striving to support and care for them, is contrary to the high principles of medicine.

We should be proud of Britain’s unique programme of children’s hospices and Zoe’s Place baby hospices. These are an example of a positive, civilised response to the challenge of disability.

We encourage Parliament to repeal the discriminatory section of the Abortion Act 1967, which allows eugenic abortion up to birth, and instead to promote research into disabilities which, once diagnosed, currently amount to a prenatal death sentence.

Professor Jack Scarisbrick
National Chairman, Life

Josephine Quintavalle
Director, Comment on Reproductive Ethics

Dr Peter Saunders
Chief Executive, Christian Medical Fellowship

Nola Leach
Chief Executive and Head of Public Affairs, CARE

John Deighan
Parliamentary Officer, Catholic Bishops' Conference of Scotland

Dr Agneta Sutton
Fellow, Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity

Andrea Minichiello Williams
Chief Executive, Christian Concern

Peter Elliott
Chairman, Down Syndrome Research Foundation UK

Dominica Roberts
Chairman, ProLife Alliance

The signatories are organisational leaders and include Peter Elliott, a businessman who founded the Down Syndrome Research Foundation UK, after the birth of his son, David, in 1985.

I have recently drawn attention on this blog to the frightening attitudes to disability revealed in responses to a Daily Mail article on abortion of IVF babies for Down’s syndrome.

Between 2002 and 2010 there were 17,983 terminations on the grounds that there was a ‘substantial risk’ that the babies would be ‘seriously handicapped’ — known as Ground E abortions. The overwhelming majority of these were compatible with life outside the womb.

Of the 17,983, a total of 1,189 babies were aborted after 24 weeks, the accepted age of viability, after which there must be such a serious risk for an abortion to be legal if the mother is not in danger.

Figures also showed a total of 66 terminations after 24 weeks were because of problems with the nervous system of the foetus, such as spina bifida.

The abortions included 26 for babies with cleft lips or palates and another 27 with ‘congenital malformations of the ear, eye, face or neck’, which can include problems such as having glaucoma or being born with an ear missing. Of those, one was aborted after 24 weeks, in 2003.

Last year 147 babies were aborted after 24 weeks, a rise of 29 per cent since 2002. Altogether in 2010, 482 babies were aborted for Down's syndrome, including 10 who were over 24 weeks. Over the period 2002-2010 there were altogether 3,968 Down’s syndrome babies aborted.

There were also 128 terminations in 2010 for the nervous disorder spina bifida, including 12 after 24 weeks.

There is no doubt that bringing up a child with special needs involves substantial emotional and financial cost, and yet at the very heart of the Christian gospel is the Lord Jesus Christ who chose to lay down his life to meet our own 'special needs'. The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ died for us 'when we were powerless' (Romans 5:6) and that 'bearing one another's burdens' is at the very heart of Christian morality (Galatians 6:1).

The way we treat the most vulnerable in our society speaks volumes about the kind of society that we are and the current abortion law clearly discriminates against disabled people. It should be revised.

You have read this article Abortion / Disability with the title Disability. You can bookmark this page URL https://celebrityunitedking.blogspot.com/2012/09/current-law-supports-eugenic-abortion.html. Thanks!

Families of children with significant disabilities indicate that their lives are enriched

Alex Schadenberg has this last week reported on a new study on children with trisomy 13 and 18 (Patau's and Edwards' syndrome respectively) which is well worth reading. I have reproduced it here. I have myself previously blogged about trisomy conditions including a wonderful testimony.


A research study that was published in the current edition of the Journal Pediatrics found that parents of children with Trisomy 13/18, conditions whereby the child has an extra 13 or 18 chromosome, indicated that the parents considered the child to be happy and found that their lives were enriched by the child.

The findings are very different than that attitude of many pediatricians towards these conditions. The Canadian Press reported:

Medical textbooks are grim and bleak about babies born with genetic codes considered "incompatible with life." But the study says parents who have these children speak of the joy found in what is almost inevitably a short lifespan. These children, they say, can enrich a family rather than destroy it.

Recently I came across the story of Lilliana Dennis (pictured), a child who is living with Trisomy 18. After reading the heartfelt story about Lilliana and the Dennis family I responded by writing an article titled: Trisomy 18 is not a death sentence.

The research study was carried out by Dr. Annie Janvier - specialist in Pediatrics and Ethics at the University of Montreal and Sainte Justine Hospital in Montreal, Barbara Farlow B Eng MBA - patient safety Canada, and Dr. Benjamin Wilfond - Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington.

The research team invited 503 parents of children who had a Trisomy 13/18 child to participate in the study. 87% of the parents responded and 332 parents (67%) of 272 children completed the questionnaire.

The parents indicated that their physicians stated to them that:

* 87% their child's condition was incompatible with life,
* 57% their child would live a life of suffering,
* 50% their child would be a vegetable,
* 23% their child would ruin their family.

On the positive side, 60% were told by their medical provider that their child would have a short, but meaningful life.

* 30% of the parents had requested a plan of treatment based on "full intervention."
* 79% of the children who received "full intervention" were alive at the time the questionnaire was sent. Those children were a median age of four years old.
* The survival rates for children with "full Trisomy" 13/18 was 40% lived for at least 1 year while 21% lived to at least age 5.

Half of the parents reported that caring for a child with a disability was harder than they thought it would be and yet 97% of the parents described their child as a happy child and most of the parents indicated that caring for their child had enriched their lives.

The article in the Canadian Press interviewed Barbara Farlow, one of the authors of the study. Farlow, the mother of a child who had Trisomy 13 stated:

"We didn't want our daughter to live on life support or to suffer. But if she had a chance to live comfortably and be happy . . . then we were willing and able to care for her, despite her limitations,"

Annie lived for 80 days. When an illness brought her back into hospital and she stopped breathing, the staff was slow to try to resuscitate her, despite her parents' wishes. Later, Farlow and her husband discovered Annie's medical file had a DNR — do not resuscitate — order on it, even though they hadn't authorized it.

Dr Annie Janvier stated to the Canadian Press that:

"What we predicted as doctors happening to all these families didn't happen," says Janvier, who admits the findings are receiving a lukewarm response in some quarters.

"I just want to show that these kids mean something to their parents, ... And they seem like they have a quality of life that's acceptable. Doctors are not torturing them. We're not giving them undue pain. And they should be treated as unique children."

Dr. Benjamin Wilfond, the lead research author in the study, told Reuters news that:

"There is a broader range of survival and experiences than providers know. The parents may be getting this information online and clinicians may need to rethink what they say to parents, I think the point of our paper is to say these are quite serious conditions, but saying it's hopeless is inconsistent with reality."

I have known Barb Farlow and her family for several years. I have learned, through Barb, much about the lives of children with Trisomy conditions. It is my hope that society will break-through the negative bias towards children with profound disabilities, such as Trisomy 13/18. Everyone is a unique human being and people with disabilities offer other people the opportunity to accept and understand the true meaning of dignity. Hopefully this study will create new opportunities for families and the children with disabilities.

More information can be found at: http://www.trisomy.org/

You have read this article Disability with the title Disability. You can bookmark this page URL https://celebrityunitedking.blogspot.com/2012/07/families-of-children-with-significant.html. Thanks!

Response to Daily Mail article on abortion of IVF babies for Down’s syndrome reveals frightening attitudes to disability

There is an article in the Daily Mail today reporting on the incidence of abortion for Down’s syndrome in IVF pregnancies.

Statistics show that in 2009, the most recent year for which figures are available, a total of 127 abortions were carried out on babies conceived through IVF-type assistance.

The data held by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority shows that Down's syndrome was the most commonly given reason for an abortion, cited in 31 of the cases – three times as many as in 1999.

Foetal abnormality was the next biggest reason for abortion, accounting for 19 cases, while 15 babies with Edward's syndrome – another condition caused by the presence of an extra chromosome – were also terminated.

As it is not mandatory for reasons for terminations to be recorded, the number could be higher. No reason was given in 22 cases. Between 2005 and 2009, some 123 foetuses with Down's were terminated.

This is not new information and in many ways is not surprising.

As I have noted before, the number of babies being conceived who have Down's Syndrome is increasing dramatically.

There were 1,067 babies with Down’s syndrome conceived in England and Wales in 1989 but by 2009 this had risen to 1,887, mainly due to the fact that women are delaying having children until an age when the risk of having a child with this condition is higher.

But despite this the number of Down's Syndrome babies born alive each year has actually gone up only very slightly from 730 to around 753 over the same period. This is because our society is increasingly taking the view that it is better if children with this condition are not born at all.

In 1989 there were only about 300 abortions for Down’s Syndrome but by 2009 1,171 babies with Down's Syndrome were diagnosed before birth, 62% of the total, and 92% of these were aborted. The number of abortions would have been much higher if more had been diagnosed before birth.

The reasons people are choosing to abort are very clear from readers’ reactions to the comments on the Daily Mail online page.

If you arrange the replies from the most popular down, then the most popular post (currently with 540 thumbs up) reads as follows:

‘It's not selfish to prevent a lifetime of pain, misery and social rejection. Not to mention the psychological damage those with Down's Syndrome experience. It must be a very tough decision for the mothers so the added pressure and guilt-tripping does not help.’

The third highest (with 427) reads:

‘Why is this a news story? I don't think anyone would 'choose' to have a child with a disability of any type if they had a choice. Survival of the fittest should dominate anyway. Red arrow away, but I'm saying what most people think.’

By contrast that which has attracted the most opposition (with 246 thumbs down) says:

‘These women are the result of the 'me me me' consumerist society - where nobody apparently, should be forced to get outside of their comfort zone - in case it makes them 'feel bad'. It's an utterly disgraceful stat - and eugenics is not too harsh a word to use.’

It is signed ‘mother of three, Dubai’. The 4th and 5th least popular (at -57 and -32) read ‘Do you expect any better of western women today? I don't’ and ‘So these couples are desperate to have a baby - only perfect little ones though please. Try adopting you selfish lot’

Of course some children with Down’s syndrome do have associated disabilities such as heart or gut defects which may require surgery to fix. And some children (both with and without Down’s syndrome!) can be a real challenge to manage.

But the responses are in my view frighteningly indicative of a growing intolerance of disability in our society and do not bode well for the future.

They also display a huge degree of ignorance. Does Down’s syndrome really condemn one to a life of ‘pain, misery, social rejection and psychological damage’? Perhaps in a small minority of cases these may occur but many children and adults with Down’s syndrome are in fact very happy and fulfilled. The tragedy is that these ill-informed prejudices will only increase as people with Down’s fall in number with more effective pre-natal ‘screening’ tests.

There is no doubt that bringing up a child with special needs involves substantial emotional and financial cost, and yet at the very heart of the Christian gospel is the Lord Jesus who chose to lay down his life to meet our own 'special needs'. The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ died for us 'when we were powerless' (Romans 5:6) and that 'bearing one another's burdens' is at the very heart of Christian morality (Galatians 6:1).

For Christian doctors bearing burdens involves not only providing the best medical care for the most vulnerable members of our society, but also supporting their families in the long haul, being prepared to speak out when they are being treated unjustly and doing what we can to oppose unjust and discriminatory legislation and health policy.

All of us are called in a whole variety of ways to engage in the fight for these very special people and others in a similar position of vulnerability. Let's pray that we fight these battles well.

[Picture shows Down's Syndrome performer Hu Yizhou from the China Disabled Peoples Performing Art Troupe conducting at a rehearsal for a concert in Seoul in this March 2004 photo. REUTERS/You Sung-Ho]

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Court ruling on assisted suicide reflects discriminatory attitudes to disabled people

The following article was written Amy E. Hasbrouck, Chair of Not Dead Yet, and published on 9 July in the Montreal Gazette yesterday under the title: 'How about the right to cry for help? Court ruling asserting a person’s right to assisted suicide reflects discriminatory attitudes toward the disabled.'

Not Dead Yet is an international organization of people with disabilities who oppose the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The article was prompted by the recent controversial court ruling in British Columbia to declare Canada’s law against assisted suicide unconstitutional but the arguments are relevant everywhere.

For commentaries on the British Columbia ruling and its relevance see recent commentaries by Will Johnston, Margaret Dore and Alex Schadenberg. The ruling is important in a UK context as lawyers representing Tony Nicklinson have sought to use it as evidence in furthering his case.

It has taken me a long time to read through the nearly 400 pages of the June 15 decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court on the issue of assisted suicide. I found reading it to be like a journey to a dark place, full of raw emotions.

The long and the short of the reasons for judgment issued by Justice Lynn Smith is that legal provisions in Canada prohibiting assisted suicide law are unconstitutional because they impede disabled people’s rights to life, liberty and security of the person.

The judge believes that having a disability or degenerative illness is a rational reason to want to die, and that those of us with disabilities should be helped to die if we can’t do it neatly or efficiently ourselves.

Justice Smith doesn’t appear to believe that people with disabilities and terminal illness are ever coerced, persuaded, bullied, tricked or otherwise induced to end our lives prematurely. She believes those researchers who contend there have been no problems in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal, and she rejects evidence suggesting there have been problems.

She writes: “It is unethical to refuse to relieve the suffering of a patient who requests and requires such relief, simply in order to protect other hypothetical patients from hypothetical harm.”

I’ll have to mention that to some of my hypothetical friends who say they have been pressured by doctors, nurses and social workers to hypothetically “pull the plug.”

The same goes for all those folks who succumbed to the pressure; I guess they’re only hypothetically dead.

Reading the B.C. court decision is hard as a person with a disability because it’s unpleasant to discover underlying assumptions about people with disabilities.

It’s one thing when a random guy walks up to you on the street and says, “I’d rather be dead than be like you.”

It’s quite another, though, when a Canadian judge says of individuals who may experience such suffering (physical or existential), unrelievable by palliative care, “that it is in their best interests to assist them in hastened death.” Same message, only the judge uses bigger words.

So what of the “suffering” she describes?

Well, a lot of physical pain can be managed by effective palliative care; and sedation is available for the most severe pain. “Existential suffering” is when someone has not come to terms with a disability or terminal diagnosis; that takes counselling, peer support and a desire to get on with one’s life. Of course, coming to terms would be a lot easier if people weren’t telling us we’d be better off dead.

The B.C. Supreme Court has chosen not to listen very closely to disability-rights advocates with more than 20 years of experience battling discrimination; instead, the court relied on the stories of people who have accepted the view that disability is undignified, and that people with disabilities should be given a streamlined path to death whenever they want it and however they want it.

Justice Smith assumes that, because it’s no longer illegal, suicide is somehow an affirmative right; and if you can’t do it the way you want to do it, then you should have the right to have someone do it for you.

But she forgot about the “right to fail;” that more than 90 per cent of suicide attempts are unsuccessful. What about the right to “cry for help?”

The judge also seems to have forgotten about the billions of dollars spent each year on suicide-prevention programs and mental-health care.

Nor does she mention that a non-disabled person who says he wants to kill himself can be committed to a psychiatric hospital against his will.

To put it simply, if a non-disabled person wants to commit suicide, she’s considered irrational and mentally ill, and is treated for depression, or maybe even locked up to prevent her from hurting herself.

But if a disabled person wants to kill herself, she’s told she’s making a reasonable choice, and not only has the right to do so, but is even helped to complete the act so her death is guaranteed where most other suicide attempts fail.

That sounds like discrimination to me.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the decision is the judge’s finding that outlawing assisted suicide somehow deprives people of the right to life. Sure, she has a logical argument to make her point, but using basic common sense, it doesn’t pass the sniff test.

It’s hard enough for those of us with disabilities to deal with architectural and communication barriers, discrimination, inadequate support services and public policies that limit our integration and equality, let alone contending with people who grease the skids to the River Styx.

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