The disability “rights” group Not Dead Yet, the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, and like-minded groups are upset by the movie Million Dollar Baby [Hot Type, January 28]. They say it perpetuates the view that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living.
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I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m sure that will be the message some people will take from this movie. Others will take a different message, which is that we ought to respect a person’s free-will choice and that we ought to help people deal with their suffering in accordance with that choice.
What Not Dead Yet is saying is that we should support only the former choice and not the latter. According to Not Dead Yet, everyone ought to be forced into the same value system. Everyone ought to be forced to stay alive, even those people whose value system would lead them toward an earlier death with less suffering. Not Dead Yet is not a “rights” group. If it truly believed in rights, it would stand by the right of choice for every person with a permanent disability or illness, no matter what that person’s choice may be.
