Whose right is it anyway?

The assisted suicide of a 23-year-old former junior international rugby player in September rang alarm bells for many disabled people. The subsequent outpourings in our national press have confirmed prejudicial attitudes that demand a response from concerned disabled people, says Paddy Masefield

Daniel James was not enduring a life-threatening situation. Nor was he burdened with unbearable pain. What he believed he was facing was the “fear and loathing” of “a second-class existence” in “the prison” of his “crippled” body. These were the words of his mother who had travelled to Switzerland to assist in his suicide a mere 18 months after Daniel broke his neck when a rugby scrum collapsed during training. The words in question were posted on a euthanasia website, an action that resulted in a reader anonymously reporting Mrs James to the police, as assisting suicide is, in the letter of UK law, illegal. Unabashed, Mrs James retorted – “I hope that one day I (can ask this woman) if she had a son, daughter, father, mother who could not walk…was incontinent and relied upon 24-hour care for every basic need…what would she have done?”

Of course we all have the right to our private views. It is when they are made public that we also should have a right to reply.

As the majority of all disabled people acquire their impairments in adult life, they will have little notion of their rights without a more positive public presentation of disability.

The media in all its forms, from advertising to reality TV shows, has totally failed to advertise the reality of the achievements, aspirations and normality of all disabled people who merely seek equal rights with their non-disabled fellow citizens.

To the litany of inappropriate – no, let’s be honest, downright offensive – language thrown up around Daniel James’s change in status, must be added the fearful arguments advanced in the press in support of his family’s actions, by philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock, that anyone perceived to be ‘completely dependent on others’ should automatically have the right to assisted suicide. While journalist Simon Jenkins derided “one anti-euthanasia lobby (that) even insisted that assisted suicide would deprive the disabled of the benefit of suicide prevention”. Proclaiming that “to honour this spurious benefit, those wishing to die – and their relatives – must endure unbearable suffering at the bidding of others ‘for the good of society as a whole’”.

I seldom wish ill on others, but I believe Warnock’s philosophy might expand, and Jenkins’s vocabulary be tutored, were both to experience the meaningful life of many quadriplegics or those with cerebral palsy.

Perhaps the untimely loss of Daniel James should be a positive force for all of us to accept responsibility for ensuring the media tell their stories within a disability context, rather than expecting Disability Now alone to achieve this.