First Person: A disabled person living in the age of MAiD
May 31, 2024
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Exploring the perspective of disabled writer Gabrielle Peters on MAiD, challenges faced by disabled individuals in healthcare, societal pressures, and advocacy for end-of-life rights in Canada.
The Disability Paradox shows disparities in quality of life perceptions between disabled and non-disabled individuals impacting healthcare decisions.
Gabrielle Peters advocates for MAiD-free spaces in healthcare to protect disabled individuals from coercion and ensure compassionate care.
Deep dives
Disability Paradox in Healthcare
Doctors often assume disabled individuals have a low quality of life solely because of their disability, leading to significant healthcare consequences. The Disability Paradox reveals the disparity between how non-disabled individuals and disabled persons perceive their own quality of life. This can impact healthcare decisions and policy, especially concerning euthanasia discussions, with a survey showing many physicians holding biased views on disabled patients' quality of life.
Navigating Healthcare as a Disabled Person
Gabrielle Peters shares her challenging experiences within the healthcare system, highlighting a shift from being perceived initially as a temporarily ill individual to being categorized as permanently disabled and unfixable. The deliberate underfunding and reshaping of the Canadian healthcare system have exacerbated ableism, leading to neglect, bias, and inadequate support for disabled individuals seeking treatment.
Impact of Euthanasia Discussions on Disabled Communities
The coverage and discourse around euthanasia profoundly affect disabled individuals, creating feelings of dehumanization, discrimination, and pressure to opt for assisted suicide. The portrayal of disability in the media and society perpetuates harmful narratives, influencing public perception and potentially pushing vulnerable individuals towards euthanasia. Gabrielle Peters advocates for made-free spaces within healthcare to protect disabled individuals from coercive pressures and ensure compassionate care.
The debate around Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying legislation is exhaustive, and there is no shortage of opinion out there from doctors, advocates, experts and academics, as well as first-person testimonials from terminally ill people who are availing themselves of the system. One of the perspectives often missing in that debate, however, are disabled people, many of whom say they feel the system pushes them towards using MAiD by making them feel like a burden on society.
Today, using a text-to-speech program, we present one of those opinions, a woman who is leading a charge to preserve some MAiD-free spaces within the Canadian health care system, where disabled people can seek treatment without the spectre of assisted death near them.
GUEST: Gabrielle Peters, disabled writer, policy analyst and the co-founder of Disability Filibuster
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