Disabledocide

“Disabledocide” is a word coined by Valerie Brew-Parrish—a polio survivor, educator, and advocate—in a column in yesterday’s Herald News Online (Chicago). The column, A name for this murder starts with:

This may be the most important column I have ever written. I wish I was blessed with the writing skills of the world’s best journalists because the message is so crucial.

Here is the direct scoop: People with disabilities have the right to live. The term “mercy killing” is an oxymoron. The disability press is in an uproar over the recent murder of Katie McCarron, the 3-year-old girl with autism who had a garbage bag put over her head to snuff out her life, allegedly by her own mother.

Recent reports have revealed that Kellie A. Waremburg, mother of four-year-old Lexus Walker who has cerebral palsy, gave her daughter a “drug cocktail including phenobarbital and 100 crushed sleeping pills to get her “to go to sleep and not wake up,” and threatened to kill herself with a knife,” according to today’s Peoria Journal Star. Lexus Fuller had to be fed through a tube, is blind and mentally retarded, and uses a wheelchair, and “was in serious condition Thursday at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria; prosecutor Kirk Schoenbein said the toddler had “‘taken a turn for the best overnight.’”

Brew-Parrish mentions Peter Singer, the Princeton philosopher and animal rights proponent who advocates infanticide when a mother gives birth to an infant with a disability. He believes animals have more rights than people with disabilities. She asks, what are we—our society—thinking to all but condone the murder of disabled persons—disabled children?

One newspaper lamented that Dr. Karen McCarron, Katie’s mother, helped other parents with their autistic children. A mother in the same support group is quoted as saying if McCarron had not helped her, she might have killed her child.

Brew-Parrish asks, whatever happened to “Thou Shalt Not Kill”??????

I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know.

I do know I would like to know more about Lexus Fuller. I hope new coverage will not forget to tell us.