She was permanently physically disabled in a car crash caused by her mother.

It was a moment in time that changed both their lives forever and caused Claire to try to end hers on many occasions.

But after decades of difficulties and depression, shes made a major u-turn on her wish to live and is now determined to save other peoples lives.

TVNZ's Sunday Programme on May 26 told Claire's story and revealed why she has changed her mind about the End of Life Choice Bill.

Chris Fords, a Dunedin-based writer and researcher who focuses on disability, economic and social issues and identifies as a disabled person, has also changed his mind about the Bill.

"I know that this will put me in the same column as Christian conservatives who also oppose the legislation for moral reasons," he says in a story posted in Newsroom.

"Personally, this makes me feel very uneasy given that I hold otherwise progressively social liberal views on issues such as abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTI rights, women's issues and indigenous issues, etc."

He then goes on to outline from a socialist, progressive and disability rights perspective why he has swung his support to the anti-euthanasia camp.

For Ford, the key arguments for opposing euthanasia is that people who are already marginalised or devalued (such as older and disabled people) would be at high risk from euthanasia.

He acknowledges that when the legislation returns that Seymour is preparing to remove the ‘irremediable conditions' clause.

However, he thinks a diagnosis of a terminal illness with a prognosis of less than six months is not a definitive time statement.

"A diagnostic timeframe is simply a clinician's best-informed opinion about when a person may die - nothing else.

He points out that some people can live for many years with a terminal illness or condition and still enjoy a remarkable quality of life if they have the right support and treatment.

Source

• newsroom.co.nz
• tvnz.co.nz
• Image: screenshot tvnz.co.nz

Some 200,000 people who were mentally ill or disabled were killed in Germany during the Nazi era. The cynical name for the extermination program was "euthanasia," which means "beautiful death" in ancient Greek. This horrific past has shaped the way Germany treats the terminally ill and the disabled. Germany's laws on assisted suicide are restrictive, and the country has stricter rules on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a form of embryo profiling, than most other European countries.

In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Germany ratified in 2009. It calls for a so-called inclusive education system for all children, which means that children with disabilities and behavioral disorders should be allowed to attend mainstream schools. The German city-state of Bremen adopted the inclusion requirement in 2009, and other German states are in the process of implementing it.

Now a debate has unfolded on the pros and cons of inclusion. Proponents say that being different has to become normal. But opponents believe that inclusion comes at the expense of special-needs schools, that teachers are overwhelmed, that better students are short-changed, and that disabled children feel excluded in mainstream classes.

It is a debate in which some are berated as idealists and others as ideologues. But, ultimately, the real issue is how to define the moral standards of coexistence.

Berlin contemporary historian Götz Aly, 65, has a 34-year-old disabled daughter named Karline. In a SPIEGEL interview, he talks about the joys and hardships of everyday life with a disabled child. Aly has spent 32 years studying the issue of euthanasia. His book, "Die Belasteten" ("The Burdened"), was recently published by the S. Fischer publishing house.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Aly, you have studied the murders of the disabled and mentally ill in the Nazi era, or what was then referred to as "euthanasia." Didn't the issue strike a little too close to home for you?

Aly: I know, of course, that my daughter would have been one of the candidates for murder at the time. But Karline's illness 34 years ago was precisely the reason I approached the subject in the first place. Perhaps it was also a way for me to come to terms with it. That's what brought me to study the Nazis. It doesn't bother me when issues affect me personally. On the contrary, it bothers me that many Germans who write about the Nazi period behave as if they have no personal points of reference. I sometimes amuse myself by asking older colleagues: "Now what exactly did your father do in World War II?" Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Deutschland.de