[stylist] anybody else watch tonight's law and order, discuss?
Donna Hill
penatwork at epix.net
Thu Nov 27 18:22:41 UTC 2008
JC,
My husband and I saw the Law and Order episode last night, and I'm
afraid we had the opposite reaction you did. I bristle when the
government or anyone in authority forces their beliefs down the throats
of people who are trying their best to deal with a situation that is
forced upon them by no fault of their own, a situation which is an
ongoing strain on every resource they possess and which the authority
figure has no clue about.
The child in this episode had no hope of ever walking, talking or living
anything close to a normal life. The procedure the family wanted and
which some doctors were willing and legally permitted to do would have
the negative consequences of pain for the child and a protracted
recovery as well as the uncertainty of the long-term effects of hormone
therapy. On the other hand, allowing her to grow to maturity as her
parents age would ensure that at some point she would be too hard for
them to physically handle resulting in her needing to be
institutionalized. The short-term pain and the uncertainty of long-term
effects of medication -- which anyone who takes any medication faces,
whether they know it or not -- are offset in the parents' thinking by
what may be decades of time for the child to remain at home with people
who are clearly portrayed as loving her and doting on her.
The complication that the writers used to make it a L & O episode in the
first count and to sway the audience toward the perspective of the ADA
Cutter was that the mother had pushed her nanny, who disagreed with the
procedure on moral grounds, into a swimming pool knowing that she
couldn't swim. The woman had a rare reaction in which she effectively
drowned later and ended up in a coma.
Though many parents must face extraordinary choices and difficult
decisions with regard to profoundly disabled children, I doubt that even
one in a million tries to drown anyone over it. That plot and the
initial erroneous assumption that the nanny and husband were having an
afair draw our attention away from sympathy for the family and the fact
that in some cases, there are no good choices, no choices that come
without severe negatives. Society, IMO, should support people in
whatever decisions they make on such matters and stop preying on the
people who have the greatest burdens.
In the end, the sensabilities of McCoy and the judge won out, but the
system is to be condemned for making the family's decision about the
medical procedure part of the legal case to begin with. McCoy's apology
to the family should have been accompanied by at the very least, the
money necessary to pay the extra attorney's fees that his office caused
the family by doing so.
this rediculous, inhumane and barbaric propensity of society to
victumize victums and to set up bureaucracies as more capable of
deciding what is good for a person or family than the people themselves
is a barrier to free thought and an unpleasant reminder of how savage we
as humans can still be.
With regard to making it an NFB issue ... IMO we should be focusing on
blind people. With two-thirds of working age, otherwise able-bodied
blind Americans unemployed and only ten percent of blind kids being
taught to read Braille, taking up the cause of profoundly disable
people, for whom there is currently no adaptive equipment or technology,
proven success strategies or role models who have overcome their
limitations, dilutes our message and thwarts our purpose.
Donna
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James Canaday M.A. N6YR wrote:
> dear list members,
> I'll try to find an NBC summary of tonight's plot. but in tonight's
> episode a couple with a severely disabled child planned to have their
> child surgically and hormonally prevented from growing up. that, so
> that she would be easier to care for, and to avoid certain
> complications.
>
> the Judge, and Jack Maccoy (now the D.A.) held that it was not the
> state's place to condemn this behavior. The judge cited the
> Fourteenth Amendment. and the assistant D.A. named Cutter, said (I
> think rightly so) that because the daughter is disabled did not mean
> that the parents had the right to maim their daughter he was
> overruled. my wife was in tears at the end, and I was shouting at the
> TV, at the end.
>
> we've discussed whether to talk about this episode with the national
> NFB, and whether to call local affiliates of NBC.
>
> so, I just wondered if any of you saw it too.
> thanks,
>
> jc
>
> Jim Canaday M.A.
> Lawrence, KS
>
>
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