Assisted Suicide in Australia - the Greens Killed Me
We generally like the Greens.
But on the issue of assisted suicide (euthanasia), there are problems. They keep proposing legislation which we'll die under and they barely ever ask us what we think about it.
Last week in WA, a guy named Robin Chapple entered in conversation with us to defend his push for assisted suicide legislation in WA.
We objected to his failure to consult with and listen to disabled people, his ableist viewpoint and his 'push at all costs' - the rationale, it seems, is that 'lots of people want this legislation'.
The problem with that is that Robin and other members of the Greens don't seem to understand that we are the people who will be killed under assisted suicide legislation in this state and others. And, you'd think, the people who are going to die should have the most say - not be cut out of the process altogether.
Last month, #criparmy and Bolshy Diva members met with South Australian MPs to tell them why their legislation shouldn't go through - please read the blog here and watch the video testimonies at the end if you care about this issue. This month, the Greens in Victoria are pushing their own assisted suicide agenda.
We've made this personal - because for us, it's very personal. In Robin's rebuttal, telling us he understood the issues, he made a statement which included this line:
'It is there for people who have no quality of life left, who are in pain, who can not eat or speak or do anything for themselves...'
And in doing so, he neatly outlined the issues around ableism and why the Greens will kill us. His perception of our 'quality of life' is part of the issue. Many of us live with daily pain and we don't want to die. Many of us do not eat in traditional ways or are PEG fed, lots of us don't speak and many, many disabled people 'cannot do anything for ourselves'.
Robin clearly didn't understand what we talked about, so we've made a creative response using real stories about disabled people - some are composite stories - explaining just why the Greens will kill us.
At the end of this page, there are resources which include the perspective of disabled people. We hope you'll take the time to read them (if you are in favour of assisted suicide or not). If you're in Melbourne in April, 2017, take the time out to go to Liz Carr's Assisted Suicide, the Musical, in order to make up your own mind. You can book tickets here.
Many of us want to die. But not for the reasons you'd think. You should be fighting for the right for us to live before you fight for legislation to allow us to die.
- Bolshy Divas
But on the issue of assisted suicide (euthanasia), there are problems. They keep proposing legislation which we'll die under and they barely ever ask us what we think about it.
Last week in WA, a guy named Robin Chapple entered in conversation with us to defend his push for assisted suicide legislation in WA.
We objected to his failure to consult with and listen to disabled people, his ableist viewpoint and his 'push at all costs' - the rationale, it seems, is that 'lots of people want this legislation'.
The problem with that is that Robin and other members of the Greens don't seem to understand that we are the people who will be killed under assisted suicide legislation in this state and others. And, you'd think, the people who are going to die should have the most say - not be cut out of the process altogether.
Last month, #criparmy and Bolshy Diva members met with South Australian MPs to tell them why their legislation shouldn't go through - please read the blog here and watch the video testimonies at the end if you care about this issue. This month, the Greens in Victoria are pushing their own assisted suicide agenda.
We've made this personal - because for us, it's very personal. In Robin's rebuttal, telling us he understood the issues, he made a statement which included this line:
'It is there for people who have no quality of life left, who are in pain, who can not eat or speak or do anything for themselves...'
And in doing so, he neatly outlined the issues around ableism and why the Greens will kill us. His perception of our 'quality of life' is part of the issue. Many of us live with daily pain and we don't want to die. Many of us do not eat in traditional ways or are PEG fed, lots of us don't speak and many, many disabled people 'cannot do anything for ourselves'.
Robin clearly didn't understand what we talked about, so we've made a creative response using real stories about disabled people - some are composite stories - explaining just why the Greens will kill us.
At the end of this page, there are resources which include the perspective of disabled people. We hope you'll take the time to read them (if you are in favour of assisted suicide or not). If you're in Melbourne in April, 2017, take the time out to go to Liz Carr's Assisted Suicide, the Musical, in order to make up your own mind. You can book tickets here.
Many of us want to die. But not for the reasons you'd think. You should be fighting for the right for us to live before you fight for legislation to allow us to die.
- Bolshy Divas
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Australian information & perspectives about disability & assisted suicide
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Accessible version - The Greens Killed Me (and this is how) They developed a policy. Such a small thing, a policy. Smaller than a Bill, but not smaller than the voices of disabled people. The men and women who wrote the policy were non-disabled people. They didn’t know about the lives of disabled people. And so the Greens killed me. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I was a woman with spinal muscular atrophy and I’d been diagnosed at birth. I couldn’t walk. I needed help to do most things. I didn’t have any support. I spent all weekend in bed because there was no funding for support workers. I pissed on a towel when the support worker wasn’t there. I bled on a red towel that I kept just for the times I was menstruating. My disability was a ‘life limiting condition’, said the Greens, said the doctors. Like a terminal illness - life shortened anyway, so why not further? I’d never expected to live past forty anyway - my sister died of the same condition. I went to a doctor and I said I was in a lot of pain, but really, I was just tired. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I’d been diagnosed with colorectal cancer, but it was operable. The problem was that I was autistic and I had a phobia about hospitals. Because I couldn’t go to the hospital, they said I’d die. My life was filled with pain and I knew my life was worth nothing. When autistic children were killed by parents, people said it was ‘a mercy’. They said autistics are ‘burdens’ and that our murderers were ‘devoted parents’. They said that we couldn’t judge unless we ‘walked in their shoes’. I had a cancer that would kill me unless I had it treated. I couldn’t tell anyone about my phobia; nobody asked me, so I just refused to go. It was easier to wait and ask for death so that I wouldn’t be a ‘burden’. Like the other autistic people, the ones who had never asked for death. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I was a teenager who was black, queer, disabled - I breathed with a BPAP machine. My mother sent me for a lot of surgeries to try and make me walk. The only pain specialist in my town was up a flight of stairs. I didn’t have good pain relief and at night I cried. I’d had 38 surgeries in my short life, just like fourteen year old Jerika Bolen. Jerika’s grandmother called her ‘unselfish’ when she decided to end her life. Her mother held a fundraiser for her to have her ‘last dance’. Thousands of people turned up and she wore a pretty dress. But I was black, queer, disabled - I had no friends, and there was no dance. Other teenagers wore anti suicide wristbands, but not me. My hospital wristband was approved by my family, and the world. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I broke my neck diving and I became a quadriplegic. There was no money for me to go home, so I went to the institution. There were people there who had been there for decades. I’d never really met anyone who was a quadriplegic and living a good life. I paid 86% of my pension to the institution for my ‘care’ and boarding. I heard about quadriplegics who were married or had jobs. But that was far, far out of reach – I couldn’t even get a taxi home. Another quadriplegic measured the space between the bollards at the jetty. He drove off into the water. But that was a long time ago now. I didn’t need to do that, because I had assisted suicide legislation. My doctor said he’d help, because ‘he wouldn’t want to be like me’. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I was treated differently every single day from the time I was born. Every time I went to the shops, people stared at me. I had osteogenesis imperfecta and they talked to me like I was five years old. I often broke bones, and I was often in ‘unbearable pain’. But it did not hurt as much as it did when people discriminated against me. I couldn’t get a job – half of all disabled people live in poverty, including me. I couldn’t get a boyfriend, because disabled people weren’t sexual, let alone gay. I was severely depressed, but I only went to a psychologist once. He said it was natural for me to be depressed, ‘given my condition.’ I didn’t need to lie about the pain, but I lied about the depression. They listed all the breaks I’d had, but they didn’t ever talk about my broken heart. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I had muscular dystrophy, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I knew that I was a tragedy and a burden. The problem was that people thought I was better off dead. I knew this when I saw that movie about a disabled man, Me Before You. I knew that because I was 35 and I still lived at home with my mother. I knew that when she wiped my arse and I saw the look of resignation in her eyes. And I knew that when she opened yet another rejected claim for funding. One day I went to hospital for a routine surgery, but something went wrong. I woke up with a DNR band on my wrist that I’d never asked for. I knew that when the anaesthetist casually asked if I’d ever considered euthanasia. You gave me the support to die before you gave me the support to live. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. I had a chronic disease that took me seven years to have diagnosed. People told me to ‘just get over it’ - my employer fired me for having time off work. I lived in poverty because my pain medications far exceeded my income. I wasn’t eligible for the disability support pension because of the new tighter rules. I wasn’t eligible for the NDIS because it was a ‘medical or health condition’. The newspapers called us ‘rorters’ and we were regarded as welfare cheats. There was a new wonder drug on the market but it wasn’t on the PBS. I went to twelve doctors and only ten said no. The other two didn’t know me, but they didn’t ask about what my life was like. It wasn’t their job to do that, and they couldn’t fix that anyway. It was the pain I was tired of, but it was also the struggle of this hard, hard life. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. The Greens killed me. They killed me at a time when disabled people had no rights. They killed me without ever asking me and people like me what we thought. They killed me because of their ideas about my worth and my ‘quality of life’. They killed me because they could never imagine having their arses wiped. They killed me because their ideas about ‘dignity’ were not like ours. They killed me because they had watched a parent die in pain. They killed me because it was easier to fight for dying than for disability support. They killed me because it was easier to fight for dying than for palliative care. They killed me because I cost too much money to support. They killed me because I had never had a job and I wasn’t ‘productive’. They killed me because I was disabled. And so I died. THE GREENS KILLED ME. Image description: The image on the front cover is of an upturned wheelchair user (the international access symbol) with crosses for eyes (dead eyes). There are images of gravestones, coffins and an image of a shadowy wheelchair. |
#criparmy and Bolshy Diva testimony to SA MPs - click here
Not Dead Yet - International collective of disabled people fighting click here Lives Worth Living - Australian collective of individuals speaking up about euthanasia and eugenics from a disability and human rights based perspective - click here Hope - Australian coalition of groups and individuals who oppose the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide and support measures - click here |