Taking Their Lives Off the Table

I continue to be uncomfortable with the intersection of disability rights groups and the far right in physician assissted suicide and similar cases. I wonder what makes disability groups comfortable with this union. I appreciate that the value of a disabled person's life is questioned when we indiscriminately allow (and encourage) people with disabilities and illnesses to kill themselves. But I also believe one has the right to kill one self if one chooses. One also has the right to seek help to do so if one requires help. That said, I also recognize that the environment in which we live makes a burden out of people with a disabilities when no burden actually should exist and this often causes a person with a disability or illness to kill him or herself.

With all this said, I wonder if we can take this "negotiation" of the value of the lives of people with disabilities off the table. If it was the case that the life a disabled person was as valued as the life an "able" person, would disability groups no longer object to PAS? I don't know. But until the value of life is considered equal it won't be surprising to see ties created between groups whom I mostly support and groups whom I abhor.