Michigan mayor allegedly advocates killing the disabled

[afleitch]

Merry Christmas everyone!

Here is a 'holiday special' post (because this issue matters a great deal to me and I can't not respond to it)


People who are severely mentally or physically disabled are a burden. A huge burden. As are the elderly and most children for that matter (I'll leave that there for reasons that should be obvious) A massive part of my old job was acting in a medical-legal capacity with children who were severely disabled. I have first hand experience of the family difficulties and the support difficulties surrounding this. I have allocated funding, medical treatment, respite care and long term residential care. I've communicated with those who can communicate. I've appointed legal advocates for them. I have went to court for them.

It's taxing and ludicrously expensive. You can love someone to the point you'd do anything for them, but they are still a burden. Saying someone is a 'burden' or a 'strain' says nothing and implies nothing with respect to how you actually view that person. Pretending otherwise, or feigning obliviousness is in fact, a backhanded insult. If you couch a 'burden' in neutral 'loving' terms, that leads to people not taking your requirements and your needs for help and assistance seriously. Because 'didn't you say they weren't a burden?' We're already seeing this (in the UK at least) when it comes to residential provision. I'm sorry Nathan, but saying that caring for someone who can't care for themselves is a 'privilege and honor' is nothing but wank. It's not. It's a duty. It's a burden. And if you're doing it or thinking about it as some form of self reflection of penance then you'd last 5 minutes either caring for a loved one or for others in a voluntary or professional capacity.

That's point one. Point two, and on a different line of thought entirely, is that those who have an debilitating or inhibitive disability that is hereditary and that they would not wish upon their childrenas much they are able to deal with it in themselves, tend to be the most supportive of ways and means to mitigate this. Which pro-life fetishists tend not to have much time for because that involves both the act of termination and the use of embryology (founded as it is on the destructive study of embryos in the first instance, and the selective manner of implantation) as factors. The alternative is not having biological children; surrogacy or adoption. And while all of these are wonderful and noble things to do, it is a slap in the face to someone who can use these means in order to have their own biological children.

[afleitch]

Excuse me?

I simply don't think it's morally acceptable to cut a swath through one's own children in order to selectively decide what aspects of one's life they inherit. You can sneer at this (and yes, you are sneering, and have been for months if not years) and imply that it means my attitudes towards people's inner eugenic thought processes are wicked and unfair all you like but all doing so accomplishes is frustrating me and making me hope you never speak to me again.

I don't wish to discuss this or any related subject with you further.

I'm not sneering. If anything I'm talking about things mitochondrial donation (which is currently in the news here for various legal reasons) I don't think that's 'cutting a swathe' through children (my sister is an embryologist; so it's something I've been focused on) I'm sorry if it's challenging your position, but the fact it's gotten you so wind up probably means you have some conflict on the matter.

[afleitch]

I'll concede, at this point, that words like "privilege" and "honor" do a terrible job of getting across what I was trying to indicate and may constitute an outright romanticization of caregiving that's potentially dangerous to those cared for. Words like "duty" are, yes, better in this context. I reacted badly against the way you framed saying that because I thought it constituted an unacceptable defense of Famous Mortimer's utterly awful position. (I'm conceding this after a discussion on the subject with a friend who's in a situation similar to mine as both disabled and an occasional caregiver to other disabled people, btw.)

It's okay. I had hoped my opening salvo noting that 'the elderly and most children for that matter' are technically a 'burden' by extension of the argument would have let you know exactly what I thought of FM's position. Sometimes you have to call a 'spade a spade' simply to get anywhere in a system that will assume that because you 'do' you 'can' (like 70 year old women left to lift their adult sons into bed despite not having the strength to do so being essentially ignored by authorities because they happen to say it doesn't bother them)