What I found striking about the reasons Dr. Low gave for wanting to assistance to end his life was that they did not revolve around uncontrollable pain, but rather they mostly had to do with the “indignities” that awaited him with the progression of his disease–“indignities” such as having to be lifted out of bed and carried to the toilet, or not being able to swallow and having to be fed through a tube.
As unpopular and uncompassionate as this will sound, I feel compelled to offer the following reality-check: As far as I can tell from this video, Dr. Low was a Temporarily Able-Bodied physician, who, like many, never came to terms with the temporariness of his ableness. Consequently, he would rather end his life than live even a few days or weeks with the kinds of limitations that hundreds of Canadians with disabilities live with (often quite happily, thank you) for years and decades. Frighteningly, Dr. Low’s able-ist views are now being amplified by scores of commentators who praise him for taking the same “common-sense” approach to assisted suicide that characterised his career as a physician. Although the concerns of people with disabilities and other vulnerable Canadians who oppose the legalization of assisted suicide are dutifully acknowledged by these commentators, it is clear where the sympathies of ‘average’ Canadians are expected to lay.
Being a Canadian with disabilities just got a lot scarier–again.
