"The Nazis believed that killing was the highest form of treatment for disability." - Joe Ford a disabled Harvard student writing in The Harvard Crimson.

"Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable." - a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

Joe Ford knows about the attitudes towards the disabled in today's society. He was born with severe cerebral palsy, and someone in the delivery room removed his endotracheal tube during resuscitation in his first hour of life. "This was a quality-of-life decision: I was simply taking too long to breathe on my own, and the person who pulled the tube believed I would be severely disabled if I lived, since lack of oxygen causes cerebral palsy. (I was saved by my family doctor inserting another tube as quickly as possible.) The point of this is not that I ended up at Harvard and Schiavo did not, as some people would undoubtedly conclude. The point is that society already believes to some degree that it is acceptable to murder disabled people."

"The reason for this public support of removal from ordinary sustenance, I believe, is not that most people understand or care about Terri Schiavo. Like many others with disabilities, I believe that the American public, to one degree or another, holds that disabled people are better off dead. To put it in a simpler way, many Americans are bigots. A close examination of the facts of the Schiavo case reveals not a case of difficult decisions but a basic test of this country’s decency."

Unfortunately we are failing the test. Read the entire article, and pray for our country.

UPDATE: Apparently this touched a raw nerve with many who would dehumanize others so they can justify in their own minds killing the unwanted. I am sorry for such folk, but will not provide a platform for them to spout their bigotry. Therefore comments on this post are closed.