Do you think that disabled people should be put down at birth?

Question

I speak as a person with skin disease. Not only am i in pain all of the time I oftern bleed in public and at night. When this happens I stick to the bed and have to have the sheets soked off. If i had the choice I would have been put down at birth. If I ever have children and they have this I wont let them live a life of pain.

Answer 1

Well, there's a lot, as a disability activist, active in three trade unions, two tenants associations and the TUC, I could say. But I will limit myself to some major points ...

(1) Only 17% of disabled people are disabled from birth, the rest acquire disabilities in later life. The age at which significant numbers of people start to become disabled is 48,

(2) With increased longevity, the percentage of the population who are disabled is rising and will rise significantly. In 1900, life expectancy for men was 49, for women 51. That generation mostly died before significant numbers of it had a chance to become disabled.

With improvements in medical care, more and more people are now surviving operations and conditions that a generation earlier would have killed them. But they do so as disabled people.

(3) Social policy hasn't got to grips yet with the problem of a higher percentage of elderly people in the population, let alone with a higher percentage of disabled people in the population.
The UK Government proposes to make both sexes work till 67, as a way of dealing with the former problem! What kind of soluton is that?

(4) In ancient Egypt they dealt with the problem by feeding the elderly to the crocodiles. In ancient Greece, disabled new-born babies were left to die on a mountainside. These aren't solutions either.

(5) Should Beethoven have been put down when he went deaf? We wouldn't have his 9th Symphony if he had have been. It didn't prevent him writing it, did it? Similarly, Motor Neurone Disease hasn't prevented Stephen Hawking from making a major contribution to cosmology.

(6) What has limited Hawking, though, is the inadequacy of his care package and support he receives. It forced him into making an undignified self-parody of himself by using his Metal Mickey voice in stupid TV commercials just to earn the money to pay for his Personal Assistants and Nursing support.

Lord Ashley's Independent Living Bill currently going through the House of Lords seeks to ensure disabled people define and get the support they need.

(7) The key issue is WHAT IS DISABILITY? The medical and charity models of disability would have us believe that our impairments are our disability. X is deaf, Y is blind, Z has mobility issues. But to fully understand disability we need to use the Social Model of Disability, which makes clear that what disables us are the barriers we face to full inclusion in society. e,g, the built environment, people's attitudes and assumptions, the policy, practices and procedures of organisations.

(8) Solutions to disabled people not having a full life therefore lie in systematically removing the barriers we face. Remove the barriers, do not remove the person who experiences the barriers! See the person, not the disability!

Answer 2

No. Most people have a disability of some sort. Where would people who believe disabled people should be put down at birth draw the line? For example; would they kill everyone who is fully blind or even those who wear glasses or contact lenses? Would they kill everyone who is born completely unable to hear and all those who require a hearing aid? How would mental disabilities be measured?

Also, would they kill people who become disabled later on in life too due to accidents or illness?

I just read the details that you added.
I'm sorry that you have had it hard but you are literate and you not only have access to a computer but you can also use it. This makes you very fortunate compared to a lot of people. Try to be more positive. I don't think you should have been killed at birth and hopefully one day something amazing will happen to you to make you value life. Chin up and take care.

Answer 3

First define 'disabled'. Can you, for example, tell someone what day of the week they were born on without a pause for thought, draw a picture of a complicated building with complete accuracy having only glimpsed it from a coach window, tell at a glance if one sheep is missing out of 200 in a field. Can you write a best-selling and popular book about the theory of the universe, become a renowned public speaker and activist, found an international institute for preventing blindness ....

If you say 'no' to any one of those achievements, then you can't do something which someone else can do and you are, by definition, in some way disabled.

I rest my case.
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Having read your additional information, I stand by what I said above in response to your bald question. No, as a general rule, nobody has the authority to say that all disabled people should be put down at birth. You have to remember that humans have a need to both give and receive. It is a complicated life we live and sometimes the fact of needing care gives someone else the chance to demonstrate a very special love. I have also known people who, even though they are in constant pain, are yet among the most selfless and beautiful people I have had the honour to meet.

I hope that, with better knowledge of DNA, you may one day have the joy of children who don't suffer as you do.

Answer 4

I sympathise with you that you feel this way about your skin condition, but what you consider as an intolerable quality of life may not be considered that way by others with the same condition.

Similarly, some people deal with disabilities much better than others. You couldn't possibly make a sweeping judgement that all disabled people should be put down at birth. For example, children with Down's syndrome are often the happiest children you'll ever come across, and yet they are considered disabled. Yes, there are some people I sometimes look at and wonder whether they have ANY quality of life.........but that's not for me to judge, and I'd certainly never make a decision as to whether a child should live or die based on "disability".

Answer 5

Yes as cruel as it may sound i believe that disabled children should be put down at birth it is cruel to let an abnormal child live for the parents own selfish guilty feelings

the child will never have a proper life and would most probably want to be put down if given the choice

Answer 6

Wow! That's a cruel thing to say. I'm sure some severley disabled people if they had a choice would choose that path because of their poor quality of life. But generally most disabled people can manage to still have a decent enough life. Some people who are not disabled have a really poor quality of life and would like to end it, so it's really a case of making the most of what you have

Answer 7

My answer is no.

When i was at school i was friends with a girl who had brittle bones, a growth defect etc, she was told she shouldn't walk.
But she did, she only used her wheelchair when she broke a bone, and the funny thing is she ALWAYS had a smile on her face.
She wasn't any more "dis" abled that anyone else i knew.
She did all the things she wanted, went out, college etc.

Every person who is born should be given the right to live.

Try talking to your Dr about your skin problem, see if there is anything further you can be doing, and talk to him/her about your state of mind, if you are feeling down or your illness seems to be getting to much for you then someone should lend you some support.

Answer 8

First, my sympathies on your suffering.

No, I don't think people should be "put down" at birth, disabled or otherwise.

Many people who contributed a lot to the world are disabled. They themselves don't see themselves as disabled. Other people term them disabled. Many doctors would classify me as disabled, but I don't see my deafness as a disability.

Why deny life to people? How do you know they will suffer like you are? Everyone is unique.

Answer 9

i think some of these people need to take the time to read your question properly. i do believe in euthanasia but only as an adult who has a clear mind of what they are deciding on. no one should have to live a life of pain and I'm sorry for what you have to go through, but there must be times when you are still grateful to be here? i hope so anyway. and to the person who said you were evil, as long as you are not planning to go round killing anyone with a disability, i think you are just trying to get your point of view across, which you are entitled to do.

Answer 10

Human Euthanasia is wrong. Think of what the world would be like 10, 20, or even 100 years from now! This sort of thing would be a stepping stone for horrible things that we couldn't even fathom.

I'd bet that back in the 1920's no one would have imagined that, the fight for equality of the sexes would lead to abortion and the feminizing of the western male. Don't get me wrong, a lot of good thing came from equality of the sexes (voting rights, etc...), but also more problems.

We should study our History before we jump into something.

A few quotes to ponder:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -Spanish philosopher, George Santayana

"What history and experience teach us is this: that people and government never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it." -German Philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history." -paraphrased by the British statesman, Winston Churchill