I WAS going to vote SNP/Green in the coming Scottish Parliament elections, because the Greens have excellent education policies. However I shall not be voting for the Greens, because they support assisted suicide. As a disabled person I will never vote for this, because a world in which assisted suicide is legal is one in which I am much less safe.
Dignity. Assisted suicide is often supported using the idea of dignity. In a society that values physical competence, the idea is that when your body has become too problematic to support you, you can avoid profound disability, pain and suffering by choosing to die. Which is (sort of) fine if, as a non-disabled person, you already started out with a lot of dignity points. If you can (usually) take it for granted that society respects your decisions and believes in your competence. But what if that is not the case?
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What if you sometimes get propelled across a road you didn’t mean to cross, because some kind person assumes that’s what you want? What if when you go swimming by yourself somebody intercepts you to ask who is with you - and even to ask where your parent is when you are 32? What if, when you go out with someone people automatically speak to that person instead of you because they must be in charge of you, even if you are speaking to the stranger in a language that you both speak, but that your companion doesn’t understand? What if, when you have a child, you’re terrified that every health professional is there to take the child away, because people like you aren’t considered suitable to have babies?
I have had to fight continuously for the dignity of being considered an equal person, because people assume that my obvious impairments mean I am not an equally competent person. The association of dignity with physical competence means that I have far fewer dignity points to start with than any non-disabled person. I want the dignity of being alive, not the nothingness of being dead.
To say that death is a more dignified position than disability is a position of such awesome non-disabled privilege that it frankly disgusts and terrifies me. Pervasive negative stereotypes about disability make me doubt that any legislative safeguards would be adequate. Assisted suicide would make me and others like me so unsafe.
Dr Nuala Watt
Glasgow
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