Murder, Not Mercy

Originally published on April 4th, 2012, on the Disability Right Now blog.  Republishing for the National Day of Mourning hosted by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

TW:  Murder/Euthanasia 

They’re trying to kill us.

More specifically, they’re trying to kill me.

Please spare me your platitudes about how you’re not trying to kill me, of course not!  “You’re one of the lucky ones.” you tell me.  “We only want to put the severely disabled out of their misery.”  Implicit in this argument is the assumption that I couldn’t possibly be severely disabled, because I have a voice.  I’m actively arguing against you.

But you don’t know me.  You don’t know a thing about me.  I could be a full time powerchair user, I could be fed through a g-tube, I could be using a communication device.  And the truth is, I’m none of those things.  But I could be.  And even if I was?  I’d still be happy.  And I certainly wouldn’t want to be dead.

You say you want to end the lives of those who are suffering.  Well, if that’s true, then you want to kill me.  Am I suffering?  Absolutely.  Not from my CP, but from the pain that plagues me every day.  The pain could go away tomorrow and I wouldn’t miss it.  But I’d still rather be in pain than dead.  And I’d like to make that choice myself, thank you very much.

You say you’d rather die than be like us.  Like me.  And that’s sad, because you have no idea what our lives are really like.  But that’s your choice.  Those people you killed – directly or indirectly – they didn’t have that choice.  Tracy didn’t have a choice.  George didn’t have a choice.  And that’s what you really want, isn’t it?  That’s your definition of “severely disabled” – incapable of expressing their choice the usual way, the right way, the normal way, so you pretend to be a noble hero and make that choice for them.

I can speak.  I can say “Stop!” when someone is trying to hurt me.  But after I’m dead, will you pretend I couldn’t?  Will you exploit the hardships of my life in order to perpetuate the idea that bodies like ours are broken?  Will you even acknowledge that I was happy, and yes, even proud, just the way I was?

You call it mercy.  I call it murder.

On Friday night, I stood in a dimly lit park, surrounded by my friends, my brothers, my sisters in the fight against ableism.  I held a candle up to the sky in memory of all of my disabled brethren who were cruelly snatched, against their will, from this world.  Not because of the natural path of illness or injury, not even because of a tragic accident.  No, these people were not with us because someone willfully, purposely, decided that their lives were not worth living.  Someone actively decided to kill them.  All in the name of “mercy” and a twisted sense of moral obligation.  If their lives were not cut short, who knows?  They might have been at that vigil with us, joining hands and hearts, building a sense of community among disabled people of extraordinarily diverse backgrounds.   But we have no way of knowing – because someone decided they didn’t deserve to live.

As a group, we must rise up.  As a group, we must protest, in any way, shape or form that we can. 

We cannot let these murders go unnoticed.  The time has passed to be nice, and polite, and grateful for the scraps of humanity that society throws in our direction.  We must demand our personhood, and we must demand it now.  Because if we are too afraid to stand for our rights, if we turn our backs on these atrocities because we are terrified that if we speak up, they will kill us too and blame it on our pitiful suffering, this will keep happening.  It already has.

They’re trying to kill us.

They’re trying to kill me.

And I’m scared.