Becoming Targets For Elimination
By Mary Jane Owen

Too many of our fellow citizens seem unresponsive to repeated warnings that the sky is about to fall on many neighbors, friends, and family members with disabilities. Most members of the public simply don't know that people with disabilities have become targets for elimination.

So, unlike the children's story of Chicken Little, when we warn " The sky is falling," we have a long series of abuses we know of which confirm what we say. Yet often the response to our admonitions is disinterest. In today's quality-of-life world this can prove lethal.

On Sunday, November 22, the impression was once again reinforced that to be disabled is not to be tolerated.

In a display of morbid theatrics Jack Kevorkian used CBS's prestigous 60 Minutes to again seek to normalize his preferred " final solution" for people with disabilities. As author Wesley Smith has written, a "little-known fact about Dr. Kevorkian is his vicious bigotry against disabled people." Smith observes that Kevorkian "has often stated that paraplegics and quadriplegics are 'pathological' if they do not want to die."

Sitting with Mike Wallace watching his own homemade video, Kevorkian calmly, coolly described the stages in the death of Thomas Youk, who had Lou Gehrig's disease, including when Kevorkian injected potassium chloride into Youk's arm. For " practical" Americans, Kevorkian's solution must seem efficient and cost effective.

An award-winning news program broadcasting a home video of Kevorkian euthanizing a 52-year-old man, however, can not be seen in isolation. Still another example is the appointment of Peter Singer, soon to take his seat as the DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values located at Princeton University. Singer has been described as Australia's "most notorious messenger of death." He acknowledges his desire to play an active role in replacing the Judeo-Christian ethic with "new commandments" based on a utilitarian model. Against this backdrop, Princeton continues to affirm their future professor is no activist, just a dedicated scholar seeking to encourage discussion of theoretical solutions to social problems.

Within Singer's ethical framework those of us with significant disabilities are "nonpersons." He asserts, "killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person."

From his personal warped perspective, only those who Singer believes are living a life he would enjoy are to be designated as "people."

A famous example he uses is that a baby pig has the capability of enjoying life to a greater extent than an infant who is disabled. People with disabilities would laugh at such a ridiculous assumption if Princeton were not bestowing its considerable prestige upon the purveyor of such an odious concept.

Singer has met with angry denunciations in Germany, where his solutions have been likened to those of the Nazis. But this Australian import expects a warmer reception in the United States. In an interview with Frederick Kunkie for the July 20 New Jersey Star Ledger, Singer said, "I'm very excited. I'm looking forward to being at Princeton, . . . to having great, stimulating colleagues to work with and excellent students." He anticipates that Americans will be more receptive and less inclined to find his views offensive than do Europeans.

Fortunately, there are some dissenting voices. British philosophy professor Davis S. Oderberg warned America in a June 30 Washington Times column: "Consider the evidence. Professor Singer has said in print, time and again, that disabled babies and infants have no right to life. Indeed, only human beings with 'lives worth living' are worthy of serious protections, and even they have no right to life as such, since talk of rights is, he says, 'a convenient political shorthand.' "

In an August 30 analysis in the Wall Street Journal, Terry Golway quotes from Singer's book, Practical Ethics: "Although people sometimes talk as if we should never judge a human life as not worth living, there are times when such a judgement is obviously correct." Golway's response: "Mr Singer does not tell us who, in his ideal world where only the worthy will live, would make such an 'obviously correct' judgement, but presumably we can be grateful he was not the attending physician when [actor] Christopher Reeve was brought into the emergency room or the obstetrician who delivered Helen Keller or the doctor who diagnosed Franklin Roosevelt's polio."

Unfortunately, this so-called "scholar's" position on life issues mirrors that of many of his less-credentialed colleagues within the culture of death. It can be summarized as, "It's better for you to be dead than disabled." Furthermore, his assertions that operationizeing his theories will eliminate suffering seems both superficial and extremely dangerous to disability advocates.

Singer fails to understand elementary distinctions, such as the difference between suffering and pain. Simple pain can be controlled. Suffering tends to be anticipatory. It includes fear and dread of what may happen and in many cases is based upon a lack of trust that there are others in our environment who will continue to love and care for us as our physical or mental capabilities fade.

Singer's repeated projections of personal dread upon those of us with disabling conditions hardly appear scholarly. He compounds the problem of a lack of careful study by emphasizing his own personal theory about the value and worth of the lives of others, untouched by real information about how they see their own lives. Singer does this by concentrating upon the most horrendous and rare conditions as he paints his pictures of unbearable anguish.

His views seem shallow and unsophisticated. Singer completely bypasses the complexity of human interaction and how essential such activity is in forming effective communities. He doesn't seem to comprehend that when we fail to acknowledge and take advantage of our individual strengths and weaknesses, the potential for social synergy is drastically diminished.

Obviously Peter Singer has never shared the joy and wisdom to be gleaned within a population he has no use for such as people with mental retardation. Probably he has never celebrated the personal victories of adults as they learn new ways of compensating for lost functions. One wonders if he has ever found peace at the bedside of a dying friend who has shared the final hours of love and acceptance.

The American belief that overcoming tough challenges reveals the most noble of human traits has persisted through the years. Obviously such a concept has no place in this Australian's mind-set.

Mary Jane Owen is the executive director of the National Catholic Office for Persons with Disabilities.