It is about Pain not Disability!

Daphne Naegele is a person with disabilities. Confined to a wheelchair, she has a perspective that most Canadians have not experienced. She shares it with us in this letter.

October 31, 1997

The Editor, Transition,
B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities,
#204 - 456 West Braodway,
Vancouver, B.C., V5Y 1R3

Dear Sir/Madam:

In considering the death of Robert Latimer's daughter Tracy, we the handicapped (I'm a wheelchair user) seem to have lost sight of something that is outside of being disabled. Our fight for our rights in so many areas has been long, and it is easy to be locked into a way of responding to Tracy's death as though we were defending the rights of a disabled person. This blinds us to what we are really defending: the right of a severely suffering young person to be treated with the same compassion as anyone else, regardless of the fact that she is disabled.

I am familiar with the condition of being in constant, unendurable suffering. As a widow with two young children, I was largely bedridden for most of three years. Constant pain when one is a parent can be tolerated if one can still carry on. But unendurable pain and inability to function is something else. I realized I could not be a parent to my children, nor could I endure the untreatable pain. (My doctors had made a decision not to do further surgery.) I planned my own death to liberate me and my children, who could then be adopted and have a chance for normal lives. A sudden emergency changed my plan and I was rushed to hospital. My doctors then decided they would do a further drastic operation. Due to unanticipated complications, I am now permanently disabled, but I am free of all pain.

Tracy's situation was far worse than mine, and for so many more years of her short life. When one has experienced the pain that I did, then one is able to speak with knowledge of what she was going through. It may be true that more community support could have helped Tracy's courageous parents, but Tracy's worsening condition could not be permanently alleviated by further medical interventions.

I don't doubt that her loving parents knew, without her being able to talk, that it was her wish to cease her anguished living. It is true that our compassion is aroused when we think of her and hear the details of her life; but it is aroused because of her unbearable life, not because she was disabled. It is simply ignorance that equates disability with suffering. This is not necessarily true, as I know so well.

Yours truly,

Daphne Naegele
Vancouver, B.C.

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When Daphne sent the above letter to the Friends of Robert Latimer she attached the following note:

I'm passing on a letter I wrote in ‘97. If you can use it please do so. Everything I said then I still stand by. It infuriates me the way many disabled people have fallen for this effort to manipulate the public thinking to establish that Latimer represents the side which wishes to snuff out the lives of the disabled. We are talking about a situation of unendurable pain that is worsening and for which there is no further procedure or treatment of any sort that would turn her life around. This is about a hard decision made out of compassion. I've had three children. Some decisions are never all to the good, or easy. Robert Latimer has my full support.