Monday, 9 November 2015

Rights matters

A loosely connected collection of links to recent news reports and blogs about rights and people with Down syndrome and other  intellectual disabilities - where the events were resolved in US law, similar rights considerations arise everywhere:

The Money AND the Gun: Denton is wrong
Craig Wallace, On the Record, 7th November 2015
... Andrew (Denton)'s speech to the Wheeler Centre leaves me bereft. He dismisses as an afterthought the disability rights critique of euthanasia with the conclusion that “using the disabled and the elderly as the spearhead of a campaign against assisted dying is politics at its most brutal”.

I want to grab the sharp but empathic guy I saw in 1990 and have him interview the Andrew Denton of today. “But can’t you get it? Can you see why people are terrified of this?”, he might ask ...

Peter Singer's Tells - He thinks his radical opinions on disability are just old news
David M Perry, How Did We Get Into This Mess? 27th October 2015
Peter Singer came to town to talk about altruism for a humanities festival. Local disability activists (sadly not including me), picketed the event, and the Daily Northwestern covered it. In their interview with Singer, he revealed something new to me ...

Jury Awards $150K After Man With Down Syndrome Mocked Online
Michelle Diament, Disability Scoop, 6th November 2015
A federal jury has awarded a man with Down syndrome $150,000 after a photograph of him was doctored and misappropriated on the Internet.

In what’s believed to be a first-of-its-kind case, Pamela and Bernard Holland of Nashville, Tenn. sued in 2013 after finding numerous instances of their son’s photo altered and reposted online ...


Guardianship Denied for Would-Be Groom Who Has Down Syndrome
Ben Bedell, New York Law Journal, 3rd November 2015"The right to have a family of one's own is not reserved only for persons with no disabilities," Brooklyn Surrogate Margarita López Torres said, "and the yearning for companionship, love, and intimacy is no less compelling for persons living with disabilities." ...

Ridiculously Happy Post
Dave Hingsburger, Rolling Around in My Head, 6th November 2015
...Yesterday, I read a news report that made me ridiculously happy for several reasons. It's the story of a 29 year old man with Down Syndrome, who, because he was in love with a woman and wanted to get married to her, his mother and brother fought for guardianship so that they could deny him the right to the relationship he had with his girlfriend and ensure that he not ever marry. It seemed, and this is my reading of the story, as if they thought that the fact of his disability was enough and that they expected this 'fact' to trump all other facts and that the guardianship would be granted ...

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