"I'd rather be dead than be like you."

        In Canada, a British Columbia Supreme Court decision held that laws prohibiting assisted suicide are unconstitutional because they impede disabled people's rights to life, liberty and security of the person. On July 10 The Montreal Gazette published an op-ed piece by Amy Hasbrouck (pictured), of the disability rights group Not Dead Yet.  In this essay, titled "How About the Right to Cry for Help?", Hasbrouck says,  “the reasons for judgment issued by Justice Lynn Smith is that having a disability or degenerative illness is a rational reason to want to die, and that those of us with disabilities should be helped to die if we can't do it neatly or efficiently ourselves. Justice Smith doesn't appear to believe that people with disabilities and terminal illness are ever coerced, persuaded, bullied, tricked or otherwise induced to end our lives prematurely."
        Hasbrouck mentions friends who say they have been pressured by doctors, nurses and social workers to “pull the plug.”  A random guy walked up to her and said, "I'd rather be dead than be like you." She has A.L.S. and says that reading the B.C. Court decision is hard, as a person with a disability – it’s unpleasant to discover the underlying assumptions about people with disabilities. 
 

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Global Peace Index
 
        Researchers have devised a scoring system that ranks countries on how peaceful they are. The Global Peace Index measures absence of violence – not just war, but crime, jail time, not having refugees, and so on. (See summary or full report) Overall, this allows for researchers to dig in and find out how peace works and what makes it more likely. The good news is that 101 countries improved their GPI scores in the past three years; the trend is in the right direction. They also calculate from studying the associated money that “If 25% of the global violence level went down, it would add an additional $2.25 trillion to the global economy. Despite popular notions of the positive impact of war industries on economy, studies show that violence is a significant drain on global fiscal resources.”
         However, the consistent-life mind immediately notes important things missing from their list of indicators for measures of violence. Feticide and infanticide are absent, this being a common blind spot in peace literature, as is euthanasia. The death penalty is also not on the list. What would happen to scores if these were taken into account? Stephen Zunes points out how nonviolent revolutions impact these. Are there any professors or students who would like to take on that project? Contact weekly@consistent-life.org. 
  

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Quotation of the Week
Warren M. Hern and Billie Corrigan, "What About Us? Staff Reactions to the D & E Procedure," Boulder Abortion Clinic. Advances in Planned Parenthood 15(1):3-8, 1980
 
Note: This is another example of the human mind’s reaction to doing violence, found across all the different kinds of violence.
       
        “Two respondents described dreams which they had related to the procedure. Both described dreams of vomiting fetuses along with a sense of horror. Other dreams revolved around a need to protect others from viewing fetal parts, dreaming that she herself was pregnant and needed an abortion or was having a baby. . . . In general, it appears that the more direct the physical and visual involvement (i.e. nurses, doctor), the more stress experienced. This is evident both in conscious stress and in unconscious manifestations such as dreams. At least, both individuals who reported several significant dreams were in these roles.”