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If you were born with a disease that made you blind, complete loss of hearing by 20, have seizures, require a feeding tube, colostomy bag, wheelchair and have sleep apnea. Would you want to live? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Part 2: if you were the parent, would you feel it would be ethical to keep them alive?

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[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yes, I think I would want to live.

I don’t think we can truly empathize with how strong our will to live is.

Also, I think questions like these tend to cause us to dehumanize folks with disabilities. (Edit: correction, I don’t think it’s the question that dehumanizes folks with disabilities, I think it is the thoughtless answer given by folks that tends to dehumanize)

Folks with disabilities absolutely can contribute to society. The most obvious example is Stephen Hawking. He could only move his eyeballs or something ridiculous like that, although I believe he did start off fully functional and slowly lost control of his muscles over time.

There’s the issue of ‘being a burden’ in family or caretakers, which is more an issue of health care in our society (USA here). It is not the fault of the disabled person that they need health care.

We are all a drain on society. No one lives in a vacuum.

No one is self sustaining, no one lives without the help from society without which we would all most likely die in a few weeks if not sooner.

Folks with disabilities are humans. It’s society’s job to take care of all humans. Period.

“If I died and went to heaven, I would sell my soul to the devil just for the chance to come back and stub my toe….” —— paraphrase from a line in a poem by Tim Seibles.