39 posts tagged “cognitive disabilities”
This is an excellent article on a father's perspective regarding the right of his son, who has autism, to sexuality and to sex.
Because this is not a Christian article, it made me think, what would a Christian perspective be on the subject of sex for people with developmental disabilities?
Legally and ethically, an adult with a developmental disability has the same rights and responsibilities to sexual activity as does anyone else. The only way this right can be interfered with is through proper legal channels due to concern that the person may not be able to consent to sex or because the person's sexual behavior may be predatory toward others.
Please understand. A man or woman with a development's disability is not a child. He or she has passed puberty and is a sexual being. As do the rest of us, a man or woman with a developmental disability has the right to choose what he or she does with his or her sexuality. To choose his or her own morals and to act on them. Our responsibility as caregivers and loved ones is to educate and protect- but we cannot, nor should not, forbid sexual activity, unless someone is immediately being harmed.
What about the Christian man or woman with a developmental disability? How do we, who have been given permission by this person, mentor his or her sexuality?
I haven't had the opportunity to do this yet. My experience in the sexuality of those with developmental disabilities has been in a secular setting, where all I had to offer the person were his or her legal rights, counsel on choosing his or her own morals, and counsel on the physical and emotional consequences of sexual activity. (The nurse was supposed to explain the, um, 'mechanics'.)
I look forward to walking this out with someone one day, not just from a 'Christian perspective', but from a relational perspective, based on the personal relationship between God and the woman I would mentor. I look forward to affirming her personhood by affirming and protecting her sexuality and inviting her to surrender her sexuality to God. And I look forward to the good things God will do through her sexuality.
I look forward the woman making her own decisions about sexual activity as much as she is able, based on what God has taught her through His Word. I look forward to her deciding for herself to choose God and His laws and deny her flesh unless married, as all of us single women must do, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through which is our only ability to do such a difficult thing.
I look foward to offering her grace and assuring her of God's grace and forgiveness should she fall.
One day soon, I hope...
Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo. I don't really know what to say about it, except that I guess I just wanted to acknowledge it.
I miss her, this stranger. I miss praying for her.
Four years ago, a real woman's life was taken from her under guise of compassion and alleged choice. She was not brain dead. Though living with a profound cognitive disability, she was not completely void of cognitive awareness (a 'vegetable' being the derogatory term), although, that would not have made her any less of a person nor any less worthy of care had she been.
We have a terrible fear of acquiring a severe disability, and we have a terrible fear of those with severe and profound disabilities. Until that fear is resolved, the prejudice that leads to institutionalization and this kind of murder will not end.
Before we blame the secular bioethicists and the 'liberal media', though, perhaps we who call ourselves Christians should look at our own ungodly reactions to people like Terri Schiavo, that is to people who are experiencing pain and suffering.
Frederick K.C. Price of Crenshaw Christian Center:
We don't allow sickness in our home." (Frederick K.C. Price, Is Healing for All? (Tulsa: Harrison House, 1979), 20
... how can you glorify God in your body, when it doesn't function right? How can you glorify God? How can He get glory when your body doesn't even work? ... What makes you think the Holy Ghost wants to live inside a body where He can't see out through the windows and He can't hear with the ears? What makes you think the Holy Spirit wants to live inside of a physical body where the limbs and the organs and the cells do not function right? ... And what makes you think He wants to live in a temple where He can't see out of the eyes, and He can't walk with the feet, and He can't move with the hand? ... The only eyes that he has that are in the earth realm are the eyes that are in the body. If He can't see out of them then God's gonna be limited he's not going to be helped...” applause (Frederick K.C. Price, “Is God Glorified Through Sickness?” (Los Angeles: Crenshaw Christian Center, n.d.), audiotape #FP605)
In John 5 we read about a man who had been sick for 38 years sitting by the pool of Bethesda for the opportunity to climb into the pool after an angel had stirred it and be healed. When Jesus asked him, "Do you want to be healed?" vs 6), the man replied, ""Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." (vs 7) After that, verses 8-9 say, Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
That's basically all these verses say about this man's healing. However, both Joel Osteen, who often makes claim to the idea that being healed is one's own responsibility by believing a certain way, in his book, Your Best Life Now and Joyce Meyer in her book, Eight Ways to Keep the Devil Under Your Feet claim that this man lay around the pool feeling sorry for himself and making excuses. Says Osteen:
If you're serious about being well, if you really want to be made physically and emotionally whole, you must get up and get moving with your life. No more lying around feeling sorry for yourself."
Says Meyer:
I would think that after thirty-eight years, a diligent, determined person could have crawled over to the edge of that pool. Even if that man had only moved an inch a year, it seems that in thirty-eight years, he ought to have been able to get close enough to the edge to just roll over into the water when it was stirred up."
And here is where fear and prejudice of disability seem to come through in Meyer's words:
Thirty eight years is a long time to lie somewhere, waiting for somebody to do something for you. I would have been on the edge of the that pool, and next year when the angel came around, when that water started bubbling, I would have fallen in and said, 'Either I'm going to get healed or I'm going to die, but I'm not staying like this'" (emphasis mine)"
And dare we forget Todd Bentley? Bentley spent the summer parading people with illnesses and disabilities on stage, either physically assaulting them or telling stories about how he had physically assaulted people at other times, mocking them, and proclaiming miracles for them, though not one single miracle could be verified by the secular media. (Go to YouTube, search for Todd Bentley, and watch the videos for yourself.)
These are just a very few examples of well known Christians' 'appreciation' for suffering. This is sad.
Thankfully, they do not represent all of us.
I read these words today in Andrew Comisky's book, Pursuing Sexual Wholeness:
In this lifetime Jesus does not intend to satisfy very craving of the soul, to remove every weakness. For our deep longings are for Him above all else. That longing within us is not merely the result of personal brokenness or the influence of family and friends: it's intrinsic to our status as the created, as children disposed to grow upward to the Creator, through His love. Our fallenness highlights the folly of attempting to secure ourselves on the earth, through the creature. The Father employs the aches and longings that remain to keep us focused on Himself.
But His purposes don't end there. He desires to employ that which has yet to be healed as an avenue of His grace. Through the wounds and deprivations that He indwells, God creates in us a deep wellsring of compassion- His heart- toward others who are broken. He graces us and intends to use us to grace others."
Though Comisky is speaking to those who struggle with sexual brokeness, the same can be said for all Christians who want their best life now and expect bodily perfection and wordly prosperity. We are all broken. This brokeness forces us to find our strengh and sufficiency in Him. We then, in turn, offer the same undeserved mercy and grace God offers to us to others, to people like Terri Schiavo, caring for and protecting their life.
It's the way of the Cross. It's the way of Christ.
From the article "European Court agrees to hear chimp's plea for human rights":
His name is Matthew, he is 26 years old, and his supporters hope to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
But he won't be able to give evidence on his own behalf - since he is a chimpanzee. Animal rights activists led by British teacher Paula Stibbe are fighting to have Matthew legally declared a 'person' so she can be appointed as his guardian if the bankrupt animal sanctuary where he lives in Vienna is forced to close...
...Miss Stibbe, who is from Brighton but has lived in Vienna for several years, says she is not trying to get the chimp declared a human, just a person.
A seemingly good idea, if not rather comical, for a seemingly good cause. I hate to see animals used and abused. But the attempt to declare an animal a person- not a good idea, not comical, and, in fact, it's quite ominous.
It is becoming an accepted idea, as evidenced by those who believe that even animals can be people, that there is a difference between a person and a human. So, with this reasoning, 'human being' doesn't automatically mean 'person', and, therefore, not every human being is afforded automatic human rights for simply being human, unlike 'persons', including the right to life.
This is what some animal rights activist such as Peter Singer want, for animals to be acknowledged as persons, while at the same time denying the existence of personhood for some people, such as the fetus, infants, and children and adults with profound cognitive disabilities.
Here's an example of his thinking from the story "An Ethical Man":
"'HIV research using chimps has not been very helpful as they don't seem to get the disease in the same way humans do,' Singer explains. 'So I don't think it's right and it's causing a lot of suffering and distress to beings who are sensitive animals--social animals who should be living in social groups and who suffer being in isolation and confined and that's wrong. If we need beings very like us to do this on, we should perhaps [turn to] the families of people who tragically have been brain-damaged and have no hope of recovery from persistent vegetative state who are totally beyond suffering because they are beyond consciousness."
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From the Chicago Tribune:
Disability rights advocates and medical ethicists praised a precedent-setting ruling Friday by the Illinois Appellate Court denying a bid to sterilize a mentally disabled woman against her will...
..."Tubal ligation is a particularly drastic means of preventing a mentally incompetent ward from becoming pregnant," Judge Joseph Gordon wrote in the 36-page opinion. There are "less intrusive and less psychologically harmful [birth-control] alternatives."...
..."It's extraordinarily significant" because it guarantees the disabled a court hearing, said Katie Watson, a Northwestern University professor who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of about two dozen medical ethicists.
"In the past, this was a decision that could be made between a guardian and a doctor," she said. "The decision must be moved into the light."
The ruling means a guardian must go through some "significant legal hoops" before a court will order sterilization, said the woman's attorney, John Whitcomb of Equip for Equality, a disability rights group.
There is so much talk out there in the world about suffering. There is so much talk out there about 'those people' who are *suffering. There is so much talk out there about how to help 'those people' who are suffering by ending their suffering. There is so much talk out there about ending 'those people' who are suffering.
The logic these days (these last days?), in this distorted world, is ending a person's suffering is worth ending the person.
I am wondering if we jump on the euthanasia, doctor assisted suicide bandwagon because we don't really know 'those people'? They aren't in our lives. I didn't know Mrs. Schaivo.
What if I did? What if she weren't just the woman I read about online or whose story I watched on the evening news? What if she weren't the woman whose disability was described differently in each article or story, as if reporters or bloggers couldn't exactly explain what was 'wrong' with her?
What if she had been someone in my life, say a friend or a family member or a woman I cared for as a caregiver? Would I be so easily tempted to talk about her in the abstract and form opinions about her based on different articles all written from different points of view?
If I had a relationship with Mrs. Schiavo, would it make it easier to recognize her life's worth, her dignity, and her personhood and do my very best to see that she has the best care and support and found a way to see that her bridge to Mrs. Schiavo and community stayed strong? Or in my pain of believing someone I love was suffering, would I accept the distorted philosophy of euthanasia?
What if I had a relationship with Mrs. Schiavo's family? Would I, in my fear of Mrs. Schiavo's disabilities, encourage her hurting family in the route of euthanasia? Or would I offer real, practical support, by way of sharing in the care of Mrs. Schiavo and of the family?
What if relationship with people with serious and profound disabilities and their families took those with disabilities out of the abstract in debate about human life and made them real people to us? Would we see ending their 'suffering' worth ending their lives? Or would we find a way to relate to them in their suffering, and instead of trying to end it their suffering at any means, would we recognize suffering as a shared human experience?
*Side, but important note, many with disabilities do not see themselves as actually 'suffering' in the way that suffering is used in the media and politics. They see their lives as normal, albeit with some hard things in their lives, but they resent that the rest of us see them as 'suffering'.
Does life have absolute value simply because it is human?
We have to answer that question. We have to. We have to.
We have to realize that bioethicists today, SAY NO. We have to become educated, at the very least aware, of what the consequences have been and will be of them saying no! We have to.
What do we say, Christ followers? How do we answer this question? A simple yes or no will suffice- for now. It's a start.
Most of us are already aware when we listen to God and let Him put His Truth in our hearts that the once taken for granted sanctity of human life is no longer a given, we will grieve for the life that has been lost, for the lives that will be lost, and for what our part has been. And it will hurt.
I know, believe me, I know, it's hard to look at what's happening. It makes us have to do all that 'thinking'. I know it's 'uncomfortable' when we seek God's Truth in this matter because we have to 'feel stuff'. We might offend people, even our friends, and be contraversial. We might even be called to speak out, make a stand.
You don't have to watch all of these videos. They are of a lecture given by Wesley Smith at Trinity Law School on the value of human life and what is happening in the field of ethics today. Watching all four will take 2 hours total of your time. So, you don't have to watch all of both videos.
But you do have to answer the question- Does life have absolute value simply because it is human? You have to.
Today at church we had the opportunity to hear some testimonies from people who had experienced healing from God this week. It was great to hear their stories of the power of God.
However, I was reminded, overwhelming so, of how much people with illnesses and disabilities are needed at my church. Yes, in part to see the glory of God revealed when He chooses to heal some of them. But also, to see the glory of God revealed when He chooses not to.
As the men and women told their stories of healing as quickly as possible with only so much time alloted them, focus and attention seemed to be only on the physical symptoms of their illness or emotional pain, with a quick declaration that God delivered them. As if they were saying, on the external, God healed my body or delivered me from this sinful outward behavior.
I know there was much more to their healings than just the external, and, again they only had so much time to speak. But what I need to see, as a member of my church, is what is happening with their hearts. Where is their heart as God is healing them? Where are they spiritually? What is God doing in their sanctifying process of making them holy? Is this physical healing a reflection of that transformation or is it something that God has given them for the sole reason of blessing them? Will this physical healing press them into deeper relationship and trust with God?
In addition to those who have had physical healing in their lives, I also need to hear from people who still struggle with a physical or mental illness or a physical or mental disability, yet are being transformed into the likeness of God for the glory of God, in faith and trust that the grace of God is sufficient in their weakness.
Yes, God does heal people sometimes of physical disability, of the chemical imbalances of mental illness, etc., and for that we thank Him and praise Him! But, He is not only concerned with the physical! He looks upon the heart! He may or may not choose to heal the leper, make the lame man walk, or give sight to the blind woman. He does not promise physical healing.
But He does promise life and life abundantly, which is found in the graceful relationship with His one and only Son. He promises new identity, freedom from sin, and transformed spirits.
Savation is for everyone!
He goes even further and uses those He chooses not to heal for His glory in making the church better! With the suffering around us, God gives us the gift of compassion and love- if we will take it. With those who struggle with their physical bodies or mental disabilities who trust in the sufficiency of God's grace, we learn to rely on that same sufficiency in our own weaknesses or when our time for suffering comes. And God gets all the glory!
What would the world be like without Down syndrome? I don't know. What would the world like without the people who have Down syndrome living in it? How have they contributed to society? I can't say.
I can say how my life personally has been affected by people with Downs. Most of the people I know personally who have had Down syndrome and I have made friends. As with all friendships, some of these friendships came easily and others took a lot of work. Either way, through our friendships, I learned things like how to trust people who said they loved me, and I learned that's it's really okay to laugh and be silly sometimes. Something I really needed to learn.
I wonder why it matters. I wonder why it matters what life would be like without Down syndrome and what life would be like without people who have Down syndrome. I wonder why it matters what people with Down syndrome have contributed to society?
No one has ever looked at me, save perhaps my father in moments of frustration and myself in moments of despair, and pondered the question, "What does Julie contribute?" "What good does her 'kind' do?"
Yet, such questions come up when making a case for life. When deciding to terminate a pregnancy when tests show the child will have developmental disabilities or when deciding, as it is becoming legal here in the west, to euthanize an infant with a severe disability or illness. Those of us defending us these children and their right to life are quick to give our western answers which base their right to existence on what they can contribute to society. What they can 'do' and 'give'. These are action verbs, if I remember my 4th grade grammar.
Instead, though, I wonder if our arguments for the right to exist shouldn't be based on being verbs. If we shouldn't understand for ourselves first, before we 'preach' to others, that our right to exist, all of ours, is based on who we are. Or even that we are.
Peter Singer and other such 'ethicists', seem to be bypassing the argument of what one can contribute to society, anyway. They are attacking directly one's personhood. They are defining personhood based on whether or not one is aware of his existence and mortality.
So, they declare that infants, all infants, healthy or not, people with severe or profound cognitive disabilities, those in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, etc., though perhaps human, aren't really a person. Therefore, if the human is not really a person, euthanasia is very much ethical.
Also, for parents and doctors who really care about children born or who will be born with severe disabilities or illness, they are not so much concerned with what the child can contribute but with the child's potential suffering. They have feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, despair, fear of the unknown, and guilt. In their grief over their child's potential suffering, parents can be swayed by the thought that the child will be better off if they let him/her die by the hand of their trusted doctor.
How do we help those parents make a choice for life? I'm asking because I don't know. While we passionately know that the child has a right to exist, how do we lovingly convey to parents that their child is better off alive and suffering than dead and at peace?
Is the child better off suffering than dead? Who are we to decide that the child must suffer? Yet, who are we to decide that death at the hands of doctors is the answer to suffering?
I think we should put down our protest signs, step out of the marching lines, with all due respect to the pro-life activists who have done much for the cause of life, and find a way to come along side suffering parents. Help them find hope because there is hope in the midst of suffering. Help them by enjoying and appreciating their child for who he/she is.
I think we should come along side those with disabilities and illness. It is through relationship with them that we will come to understand that most of their suffering does not come from their disability or illness. But rather their reception from the rest of society of prejudice, rejection, untold amounts of abuses, and the suspicion and judgment by some of us of their very existence.
A 23 year-old woman may be killed, may be killed the way that Terri Schiavo was killed. Her feeding tube would be removed, thus resulting in starvation and dehydration, and then death. Words like 'persistent vegetative state' and 'life support' are being thrown around regarding her story, but the only life support this woman uses is a feeding tube.
Why do the doctors and some of her family members want to end her life? Why was Mrs. Schaivo killed? I don't know. Because she was suffering too much? Because she wouldn't have wanted to live like this? I really don't understand the argument, and I'm tired of pretending I do.
These women are fairly easy targets for euthanasia. They cannot speak for themselves. The doctors and lawyers and some of their family members who advocate removal of the feeding tube put themselves in the sufferers' positions and can't imagine living like that themselves, maybe, thus acting on some sort of distorted empathy? We as a society judge the only alternative to 'poor quality of life' to be death, instead of making efforts to actually improve someone's life? Dare I say, the cost of the feeding tube, other medicines, and around the clock personal care?
In Canada an eighty-four year old man's feeding tube may be removed, also. He like the women is not dying. He incurred a brain injury in 2003, and has been in the hospital since October due to pnemonia. His body is not shutting down, and he is benefitting from the provision of fluid and food. Unlike the women, the decision to take this man's life is not being made by any of his family, but rather the hospital where is receiving care.
This man and his family are Orthodox Jews, and in an affidavit, local Rabbi Y. Charytan, said Orthodox Jews believe "life must be extended as long as possible and we are not allowed to hasten death." A lawyer for Grace General Hospital, however, told the court that doctors "have the sole right to make decisions about treatment - even if it goes against a patient's religious beliefs."
These people are alive. A feeding tube is not an 'extreme measure of life support'. It's the way they eat. As the 84 year old man's family's lawyar said, "...I don't see the difference if [a doctor] came in and put a pillow over his face."
I'm baffled. This is really happening. We in the west are actually deciding that the murder of innocent people is okay sometimes.
My heart is heavy, and I don't have words to describe what's going on in my head. How does one argue the case for life? Who would have thought we would have to?
Psalm 72
12 He will rescue the poor when they cry to him;
he will help the oppressed, who have no one to defend them.
13 He feels pity for the weak and the needy,
and he will rescue them.
14 He will redeem them from oppression and violence,
for their lives are precious to him.
Zephania 3
19 And I will deal severely with all who have oppressed you.
I will save the weak and helpless ones;
I will bring together
those who were chased away.
I will give glory and fame to my former exiles,
wherever they have been mocked and shamed.
20 On that day I will gather you together
and bring you home again.
I will give you a good name, a name of distinction,
among all the nations of the earth,
as I restore your fortunes before their very eyes.
I, the Lord, have spoken!”
