Spring she/her

Observer, questioner, challenger of the status quo. Tetraplegic. Anti-ableist. Atheist. Underestimate me at your own risk.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

To all my disabled peeps - Please remember:

You are not a burden.
You are not a burden.
You are not a burden.

[Panonse @panonse]

@tylerblack32 There's a huge difference between DNR and actively killing someone who would otherwise live. But even with a DNR if someone changes their mind and ask for care the default response should be to give them care.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

I just straight-up can't imagine having the responsibility for deciding when it's 'the right time' for an elder to die. What a thing to ask another human being to carry.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

I have the hardest time imagining any doctor willingly participating in the death of someone who can't consent to dying in the moment. Well, I have the hardest time imagining a doctor willingly killing anyone, but this is so upsetting to me.

[Sean Fraser @SeanFraserMP]

@MarjoriePLC Canada also intends to allow adults diagnosed with an illness such as early-stage Alzheimer’s to make an advance request for MAID, so their wishes could be respected after they lose the ability to decide for themselves.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

Hi. Disabled person here. By your standards a 'severely disabled' person. You just explained why so many disabled Canadians are opposed to MAiD.

Because people like you make judgements about the quality and value of our lives.

[AccessibleHousingPledgeBC @pledge_bc]

Thank you @trevorkelowna, Mike Harris, and George Morgan for signing the Accessible Housing Pledge!

https://t.co/55icROwxlr

[Kristine Stringham @GrandmaKristine]

@walshrac @AmandaAchtman I wouldn't have believed the extent to which people equate independence to dignity prior to entering this online discussion around MAiD.

Dignity and worth are inherent to each of us as human beings. We don't 'earn' our dignity by not needing others' help and support.

[AccessibleHousingPledgeBC @pledge_bc]

Please ask your local candidates to sign the Accessible Housing Pledge. Thank you @ryanlpainter @TracyCareQ and others for signing already!
https://t.co/55icROwxlr

[AccessibleHousingPledgeBC @pledge_bc]

The Accessible Housing Pledge is back!
Please ask the candidates in your riding to read it, and take the pledge to take action to create more accessible housing if they are elected!

https://t.co/55icROwxlr

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

Did the Pope read my pinned post? (jk)
Whatever you think of the Pope, I agree with him on this.

Disabled people are not burdens.

[Mark Lambert @sitsio]

“You are not a burden.”

Four simple words from Pope Leo at Lourdes today, but in contemporary France they carry enormous moral weight. Only last month France enacted its new law establishing a right to aide à mourir. And today, surrounded by the sick, disabled, frail and suffering, Leo confronted the anthropology behind the euthanasia debate head-on. Human dignity, he said, “cannot be measured or debated”. We must reject causing death under the guise of “false compassion”. “What is legal is not necessarily moral.” And to doctors and nurses: Your vocation is “to care for a suffering person, not eliminate that person.” Then he turned directly to the sick: “You are not a burden. You are the beating heart of our humanity and a precious treasure for the Church.” That is the Catholic answer to the terrible fear which haunts so much of the assisted-dying debate: I am useless. I have lost my independence. My family has to care for me. I cost too much. Perhaps everyone would be better off if I were gone. No. Your value does not diminish because your body fails. Your dignity does not depend upon productivity, independence, cognitive ability, youth or health. You do not become less human because you need someone else to feed you, wash you, carry you or sit beside your bed. And compassion does not mean eliminating the person who suffers. It means refusing to abandon them in their suffering. That is why Leo's call for proper palliative care matters just as much as his condemnation of assisted death. Christianity's alternative is not: you must suffer it is: we will suffer with you. Perhaps nowhere could that message have been more powerfully delivered than Lourdes, where for generations the sick have not been hidden away as an embarrassment to human autonomy but brought quite literally to the centre of the Church. “You are not a burden.” France so needed to hear those words!!

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

Decisions about who gets assistance to die and who gets assistance to live will never not be subjective, so will always be suseptible to bias, ignorance, or even bad intentions.

This is objectively true.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

Just to be clear - even if we had all the supports in place for disabled people to be able to live our best lives, I would still be opposed to MAiD.

Physician assisted dying fundamentally changes our relationship with aging, with disability, with suffering, and with death.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

by removing the elderly, sick, disabled, mad, or even the sad. It will grow to include other iterations of 'difference' if we don't stop it.

[AccessibleHousingPledgeBC @pledge_bc]

With multiple elections underway in BC, we will be relaunching the Accessible Housing Pledge soon. Please watch this space!

While we are getting the pledge site updated, you can prepare by collecting contact info for the candidates in you local and provincial elections!

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

It is the very subjectiveness of these judgements that make physician assisted suicide unsafe for society.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

The way critical thought is absent from the inflammatory discourse around MAiD is really quite something.

But by the OP's logic, why do we even offer suicide prevention? Does no one recognize the arbitrariness of this reasoning?

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

If this person only had diabetes, would it still be reasonable to help him perform suicide? What if it was just blindness in one eye?

Is there some sort of rubric that should be used? 6 out of 10 means your choice to die is valid, but 5 out of 10 your choice to die is not?

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

We are assuming that doctors are perfectly following regulations they are perfectly assessing criteria they are doing everything in good faith, when we know that is not the case in essentially any other aspect of health care,” said Tang.

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

“We know that there is a lot of discrimination in health care. We know health care was built on a foundation of racism and colonialism. And I think it’s very strange that we seem to entirely put that away when we are talking about MAID.

https://t.co/c2W2POsGb2

[Spring she/her @SpringHawes]

Not sure about you, but I don't have a text-message-level relationship with my doctor, and I certainly have never hitched a ride with him. I don't think this was a 'normal' or professional relationship at all. Sounds a lot like grooming.

https://t.co/FTVZzPjQ6i