I have another disability-related item to cover today, but one rather more complicated and more troubling. A guy called Tony Nicklinson will go to the high court today to argue that he has the right to ask doctors to kill him. Nicklinson, who has Locked-in syndrome, argues that he has no quality of life but, given that he cannot commit suicide on his own, wants the right to ask doctors to legally end his life. Needless to say this case has me in a quandary: on one level, I agree that disabled people should have the ability to do anything they whish, which of course includes topping theirselves. But on another level, I must say I find this story very, very disturbing indeed.

I don’t want to sound like a right-wing moron going on about the sanctity of life, and nor do I seek to tell others what they can and cannot do, but frankly, to hear this guy go on about having no quality of life fills me with rage. I suppose it might be slightly different for those who become disabled after birth, especially people who had previously lived very active lives, but having seen people far more disabled than he is relish life to the full, I find what Nicklinson says absolutely cowardly. It is as if he thinks that, now he is disabled his life is worthless, as he can no longer do what he once was able to. When I hear him speak I think I detect a touch of disabledist baggage carried over from his previous life. It is as if he thinks that now he has a disability his life is over as he can no longer do the activities he once enjoyed. The implication of this, at least in my mind, is that he thinks people with disabilities live lives which are less worth living.

Indeed, should he get his way and the law is changed, I fear that is the message which would be sent out. For starters, the general public might start to assume that we all think like Nicklinson does – that we all think our lives to be unbearable and want to top ourselves at the earliest opportunity. Such a change in the law would thus devalue the lives of all disabled people, and under the right circumstances it would be fitting and right to kill us. Such a prospect mortifies me, and to hear a fellow disabled person advocate it using the language of equality is horrifying. If we think it through, such a judgement would open a pandoras box of concerns for other disabled people as well as fundamentally changing how disability is perceived. What Nicklinson is doing, then, is selfish in that he doesn’t seem to care about the implications of what he is asking for for other disabled people. He just wants to end his life without caring that A) he can still do all the activities that he used to, given the right support, B) there are people with far more profound disabilities than his who would probably be appalled at what he is saying, and C) he may find using his communication aid slow and laborious, but he is bloody lucky to have such equipment and can communicate at all. I keep thinking of all the people I have known over the years, far more profoundly disabled, who would never stoop to such self-pity, so to see this guy spout such lachrymose drivel fills me with bile. At least he had the chance to do all the things he did and, who knows, might one day do again.

On one level, perhaps a general one, Nicklinson has a point: people with disabilitites should have as much freedom as anyone else, including the freedom to end one’s life. But to see it in such terms is far too simplistic: effectively legalising murder, albeit with consent, leads on into far darker places. The freedom to ask to be killed is something quite different to, say, the freedom to decide what to eat or where to go. It has profound consequences following on from it, as well as raising the prospect of people actually being coerced into asking for death. Should the law be changed, the value of the lives of all disabled people would be downgraded and seen as something barely worth living. Murder must therefore remain murder, and Mr. nicklinson must learn to be content in the body he has, as the rest of us do.