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1/20/98 12:18 pm
FIRST, more about Not Dead Yet!
One year ago the success at the U.S. Supreme Court did not end the national debate on this topic. The Hemlock Society, the organization supporting physician assisted suicide, is becoming even more radical.
The Hemlock Society would like to draw their opponents as right wing religious nuts. But Not Dead Yet! is not a religious group and we confront supporters or physician assisted suicide with civil rights issues.
Our community needs to be clear that physician assisted suicide is not an issue of personal liberty - it is directed at further devaluing disability. The Hemlock Society elevates the typical "dignified" life and perpetuates stereotypes and fears about disability.
Not Dead Yet! stands for the dignity and personal liberty that is all human life. Not Dead Yet! believes that no law should target a population based on a diagnosis, or stereotype. Not Dead Yet! works to ensure that the medical bias of able-ism does not diminish and deny care to people.
If you are overwhelmed with compassion by someone that supports physician assisted suicide; remand them that suicide is legal in all fifty states yet 2 million Americans have no choice but to live in a nursing home, state school, or ICF/MR.
Why do we not have curb cuts in this city? Because Memphis has never presented a "transition plan," to be a guide in creating access in Memphis. Without a guide, city engineers are only able to work as money comes available. It allowed the city to divert the $6 million they had to do the job to Covington Pike in 1995.
We feel that Memphis has not been responsible about this. By negligently ignoring writing a plan they make people with disabilities beg for their civil rights. Sure the city graciously "gives" us some curb ramps, but it makes the disability community seem as if they are standing in the way of progress, as if they should be indebted for whatever and whenever the city creates more access.
Actually it is the poor administration of the city that fails to have the overall legal guidelines, and thus denying people their rights.
Be at the next BFMS meeting Feb. 2, at 3pmc at MCIL.
Tim Wheat
Memphis Center for Independent Living
The Memphis Center for Independent Living
1633 Madison Avenue,
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 726-6404 v/tty (901) 726-6521 fax
mcil@mcil.org
MCIL is a United Way of the Mid-South member Agency
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