Hi Erich,
just a short response,
of course as an individual a disabled person can also use and defend the
sanctity of life ethics. But as a movement I feel that different groups
have different arguments they can put forward to maximize the effect.
That's how the Northern Territory bill was defeated. Pro life groups had a
certain set of arguments aboriginals had another set of arguments
disability groups another set... And any of them convinced a certain
amount of people.
I did not mean to imply that sanctity of life ethics is not a good ethics.
I know actually disability groups who work from the sanctity of life
angle. But as a whole most disability groups would not be able to do so as
their members are not neccessarily believing in it.
I only stated that Singer in essence uses the quality of life or life to
be ethics as the new ethics and that ethics is of course dangerous to
disabled people as non disabled people view our lives as having low
quality.
We could use the ethics we use all the time like "Equality of life and
life to be ethics " (in other word Anti discrimination) or "Human right
ethics "(also with that one we might have trouble to cover the genetic
field). I prefer the Equality of life and life to be ethics or "Equality
of Characteristics Ethics" meaning that every characteristic is viewed as
equal and society can't discriminate against a characteristic. So we have
an alternative ethics which we can use
Yes I can see the incoherant in our arguments where indeed we question
whether choice exist for disabled people in the case of Euthanasia but
we don't question whether choice realy exist for women to have a disabled
child. If you read the papers on my webpage I make the points that in both
cases Genetics and Euthanasia thayt choice is a myth. Indeed disabled
people are just humans and we often fall for soundbites and often do not
think it through logically. It's not easy. THere is a reason why so few
disabled people work on Bioethic issues.
So what all my papers are focussing on is on the equality aspect. Why just
have access to Euthanasia for disabled people why not the prisoner. Why
condemn the deselection of the characteristic female in India but not
condemn the deselection of the characteristic disability around the world
(including India). THat's how I set up my papers.
My way might be flawed but it's the best I can come up with. But as I all
the time say any comments are welcome to improve my reasoning. Any
shortcomings in my papers everyone feel free to point out.
Cheers
Gregor
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