Talia Lavin: Disability, Eugenics, and the Value of Human Life

[Nevilledog]

https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich/archive/disability-eugenics-and-the-value-of-human-life/

Your worth is not tied to what you can do. Your worth is not tied to your health. Your worth is not tied to all the things you can do unassisted. Needing help does not make you worth less.

This week I’ve been repeating these phrases to myself in a more or less mantra-like fashion. I’ve felt the need to, after watching some particularly soul-scalding speeches from America’s grotesque caricatures of medical authority: RFK Jr, the failson conspiracy theorist now, somehow, in our nightmare world, the Health Secretary; and Dr. Oz, green coffee enema proponent, failed Senate candidate, and now Medicare-czar. “Your health is your personal responsibility,” he declared, artificially taut-skinned as a living bongo. RFK Jr., after spreading the gospel of measles by discouraging vaccination (and going! On the news! To obliquely blame! A child! For her own death! From measles! Because she was not “healthy”!), gave a speech that essentially dismissed the worth of those with autism. They’ll never pay taxes, he said. Never write a poem, fall in love, go to the bathroom unassisted. Of course, he blamed vaccines, which is so aggravatingly, horrifyingly, tentacularly stupid that it would (and has) generate several million columns’ worth of copy.

Beyond ignoring the many, many extremely high-functioning people on the autism spectrum, the core message of RFK and his ilk is that a life where you cannot do things unassisted is a scourge on society that must be eradicated. This is an unacceptable and hideous viewpoint. It is the viewpoint of someone who sees certain lives as inherently worth less than other lives.

Being a disabled person in America, in the gruesome end-run of its toxic individualism, you are always aware of an undercurrent of skepticism, and sometimes of outright hostility. This is particularly true when it comes to invisible disabilities, such as mental illness (my bugbear, agoraphobia, is on New York State’s list of disabling conditions). The general tenor of ignorant discourse is that you could cure yourself if you just tried harder. If you tried hard enough—with grit, will, bootstraps, crystals, oils, meditation, weed, sobriety, etc. etc.—and showed enough gumption, your brain would no longer hijack your nervous system at regular intervals. Therapy and medication don’t really count as trying in a lot of these conversations; they’re cheating; it’s about innate will and perseverance and character. (And, incidentally, trying to push through your disability more often than not causes tremendous pain, and some of it is irreparable.)

If your health is your responsibility, ill health is your fault. If disability is a burden on society, then each person who suffers ill health is a net detriment to society at large. That is the message of this administration, and it is a perspective both devoid of worth and capable of doing tremendous harm.

*snip*