The Disability Double Standard; Instead of helping the disabled live full lives, new laws seek to help them die - opinion

Instead of helping the disabled live full lives, new laws seek to help them die.

OPINION: By JONI EARECKSON TADA - The Wall Street Journal, Jan 9, 2013

In the 23 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I have watched its most celebrated ideals crumble under a double standard. Apparently, when it comes to people with disabilities having a right to live the fullest life possible, some disabilities are more deserving than others.

I had the honor of serving on the National Council on Disability when the ADA became law. It was intended to guarantee the basic rights of Americans with disabilities. Many saw the ADA as a means of moving society beyond the premise that one is "better off dead than disabled."

I am amazed, however, to see how the fear of disability has eroded the most basic of rights, especially now that so many more people are surviving disabling conditions. When such fear is allowed to influence legislation to allow people with disabilities to kill themselves, the notions of personal autonomy, freedom and dignity that the ADA championed take on a grim irony.

First it was assisted-suicide laws. For example, people with dementia and depression have already taken advantage of assisted suicide in the United States. In the Netherlands, people with the neurodegenerative disease ALS—sometimes called Lou Gehrig's disease—have had their physicians legally administer aid-in-dying by providing lethal drugs. What happened to the goal of helping disabled people live independent lives with dignity?

A double standard is now being applied to the most vulnerable among us, infants with disabilities. On Dec. 13, a couple in Washington state was awarded $50 million in a landmark "wrongful birth" lawsuit after their son was born with severe disabilities. The suit alleged that a hospital and laboratory did not fulfill their obligation to screen for a particular rare genetic anomaly.

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The ruling nevertheless sends a clear message that a person with a disability may not have a life worth living. It inevitably will put more pressure on health-care professionals and insurance companies to test for every possible fetal abnormality, thus putting more lives at risk in the womb. So while a disabled person's civil rights are recognized under federal law, those rights are nullified when confronted with stereotypical notions about the "tragedy" of a disabled person's existence.

This double standard is glaringly obvious in Belgium's Parliament, which may soon legalize euthanasia for children with incurable diseases—who, with the support of their parents or guardians, ask to die. The House of Representatives must endorse the proposal before it becomes law. In the future, incurable diseases may well be interpreted to include disabilities.

This same parliament in 2009 ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which clearly declares that "every human being has the inherent right to life and shall take all necessary measures to ensure its effective enjoyment by persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others." I don't understand how the Belgian legislators can agree that individuals with disabilities have "the inherent right to life," yet at the same time offer a so called right-to-die not only to adults, but also—heartbreakingly—to children who may feel distraught by their condition.

A child of 10 years lacks the mental, emotional and psychological maturity to make such a decision about death. It is abhorrent to burden a child with such an unthinkable responsibility. Life is the most precious and foundational right of humanity. Society's unwritten moral law has always led us to save our children—and certainly not to allow them to destroy themselves.

It seems that the rights of a person with a disability fall under a subset of other more significant rights—that is, the right of an individual to choose, especially if it involves the birth or death of another.

This winter, the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disability. We need to make up our minds. We cannot logically on the one hand widen a definition of disability to include an unlimited number of conditions in order to legislate protection, and then on the other hand claim that it is morally permissible to prevent those with a disability from being born or to assist in killing them once they are here.

What kind of society do we want? If we are seeking a good society, then we do well to defend the rights of the helpless—not nullify their rights in order to destroy them. It benefits all of us to minister to those who are hurting, not to agree with them that life isn't worth living.

Ms. Tada, an author and a quadriplegic, is the founder and CEO of Joni and Friends International Disability Center, in Agoura Hills, Calif., which serves people with disabilities world-wide.

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