Shaun 🏳️🌈🍉#GeorgeUpjohn, a former pilot in Sydney with brain cancer has been repeatedly rejected for the #DSP because his condition is steadily deteriorating. He's had to sell his possessions and borrowing increasingly large amounts of money from family to stay alive: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/28/turned-away-how-strict-government-rules-denied-young-pilot-with-brain-cancer-the-disability-pension
What happens to George when the same state that has refused to offer him the supports to live enthusiastically informs him that he qualifies to die?
The Australian state pays a *significant* amount of money to support me and people like me. What happens when they figure out instead of paying our #NDIS plans every year they can just pay a one-time cost to off us?
If this scares you, I'm glad. It scares me.
#ActuallyAutistic people in #Australia already die 17 years sooner than other Australians. I know I'll probably get less time than my predecessors: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.2086
(This pales compared to Autistics in the #US, whose life expectancy is *36*, or even #Sweden, the only other country where we have data, where it's only 54): https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303696?journalCode=ajph
Many disabilities are similar: we are among the lowest-valued people in the world.
I want to thank
@[email protected]
for her incredible reporting on #MAiD over the course of years: most things I learned about MAiD were either from her, or via people I found from her page.
For the rest I've been advocating on these issues & studying policy for about a decade.