Murder by another name

Some years ago in Canada we had the Lattimer case, where a man gassed his severely disabled daughter. A lot of people came out of the woodwork to discuss how the father was a kind and loving man, and this was an act of love. The disabled trembled in fear as people wrote long and passionate letters and articles stating, in brief, that their lives were not worth living and killing them would be an act of mercy.

Now this case in Britain, where a young girl with autism was starved to death with the approval of the British legal system. Nancy Fitzmaurice's mother fought hard to see her daughter dead, and the press lined up to portray her mother as a loving woman who, like all mothers, only wanted what was truly best for her child. 

We recently celebrated the seventy first anniversary of the defeat of the abomination that was Hitler's Germany. Almost four hundred thousand people from Britain and her Commonwealth died in the struggle to destroy the monstrosity of Nazism, its warped philosophy and twisted science and its goal to eradicate from the world all 'life unworthy of life'. And now many in Britain have embraced the heart of the ideology they once bled to destroy.

My son is autistic. He has been assessed as being on the moderate to severe end of the spectrum. It sickens me to know there are many out there who would pat me on the back were I to murder him, and call it an act of love and mercy. An act of love and mercy to kill a boy who spends most of his day laughing and smiling.

There are days when this world and the people in it make me sick.