It’s been three years since Roe fell, and we’ve seen a drastic increase in infant and maternal deaths.

Abortion is healthcare, and restricting access is the opposite of “pro life”

What’s worse, misogyny in medicine is taking away our autonomy even when we aren’t pregnant 🧵 Women have never had the same autonomy as men, but we were making progress. We were finally starting to be allowed to make informed choices about our bodies & reproductive organs.

Since Roe fell and the right started screaming about birth rates, our gains have been eroded

The hospital in Georgia didn’t “save a life”

They had that chance when Adriana Smith sought medical care. They could have saved her & her fetus.

What they did was carry out a medical experiment without consent.

They failed her in life & then robbed her of dignity in death 🧵 She was only 9 weeks pregnant when declared brain dead.

There’s no medical precedent for keeping someone’s body on organ and tissue support at that stage in a pregnancy.

The fetus was not viable. It couldn’t survive the death of its mother.

When I needed a hysterectomy due to severe endometriosis & adenomyosis, I was repeatedly denied

Told I “might want kids.”
Told I “might meet a man who wants kids”

I was left disabled & bed ridden, yet the system continued to try & save my diseased uterus against my will 🧵 I was forced to undergo six painful abdominal surgeries to try and control the disease

Each one left me with more pain than the one before.

Each one took longer to recover from.

Each one caused more scarring.

Whatever your personal beliefs on Assisted Dying, we should all be able to agree on 2 fundamentals:

No means no. If a patient doesn’t want it, end of discussion.

It should never be offered in lieu of care or social supports.

If it is, it’s not compassion.

It’s eugenics 🧵
I find whenever I try and talk about the problems with MAiD in Canada, people assume I have an agenda.

Religious backing, a vendetta or some sort of other reason I want to “deny” people the right to end their suffering.

I don’t want to deny anyone that right

Alma Bowman is a 58 year old disabled woman who spent 30 months in ICE detention witnessing atrocities against women.

When released, she worked with the government as a whistleblower to raise awareness of the inhumane practices in detention centres.

Now ICE has her again 🧵 They also have Rodney Taylor, a disabled double amputee who was two days away from getting new prosthetics when ICE grabbed him for a crime he had been pardoned for.

He’s being denied medical leave to get his new legs, and can barely even walk to the cafeteria.

I was scared for years to weigh into the assisted dying debate.

It’s a difficult subject & people have big feelings.

Whenever I share my experience of having it pushed at me despite my saying I didn’t WANT to die, I’m told it didn’t happen.

I’m wrong. That’s not coercion 🧵 My point of view is called into question. I’m told I must have misunderstood. A healthcare worker would never do that.

If I’m able to “convince” them I’m telling the truth, there’s still no outrage.

There’s no desire to fix the problem.

I found the New York Times Magazine piece on MAiD (medical assistance in dying) deeply triggering.

Why? Because as a disabled Canadian I’ve had it “suggested” to me when I was at one of my lowest points

I support dignity in death, but it must never be a substitute for care 🧵 A doctor proactively “suggested” MAiD to me for an entirely treatable condition, and they did it when I was at my lowest point emotionally.

I had lost a caregiver. I hadn’t slept in days. I was upset and disheveled & pleading for help.

I didn’t know where else to turn.

A former “friend” told me he cared for me & wanted me to have everything I needed… but that it was time I realize I’m a net negative in society.

He referenced my “free surgeries”, countless ER trips & how the system was artificially extending my life.

🧵 He said he had given this a lot of thought, but that he realized he was sick and tired of his taxes supporting people who can’t contribute economically.

That wanting me to have good care was hypocritical since he doesn’t support handouts on “principle”

“If you can afford a cellphone you can afford to eat healthy” is such a privileged and out of touch take.

A cellphone is no longer a luxury.

Everything is tech based these days. You’re effectively cut off from the world without a cellphone.

It’s also a one time expense. 🧵 Healthy eating is an every day commitment.

It’s not something you can do once or twice and see any benefit.

It’s expensive, time consuming and requires physical ability that not everyone has.

You have to be able to shop, put away, prep, cook and store.

The story of Alma Bowman, a disabled woman detained by ICE, keeps getting worse

She’s been in the country 50 years. They took her wheelchair, denied her medications & threw her in a detention facility

Did you know she was a whistle blower against forced sterilization? 🧵 In 2020, she was a key witness in a legal battle against Irwin County Detention Centre

She helped blow the whistle about a doctor performing unnecessary hysterectomies and sterilizations on immigrant women detained in the facility

She was very nearly deported for speaking out.

When I first saw the media calling the new Covid variant NB.1.8.1 “razor blade throat”… I cringed.

It was such a blatant attempt at a click bait headline, and given almost all of the articles minimized the risk, it felt like lazy journalism.
But then something happened…
🧵 People started to pay attention. They started asking where to get masks and tests. They started asking if I had spare respirators.

They engaged.

I’ve genuinely not had this many people ask about masking in years.

Here’s the thing about suggesting “cooking classes” as an alternative to insulin for diabetics.

It’s ignorant. It’s ableist. It’s eugenicist. We know all of this.

It’s also incredibly privileged.

It assumes that healthy eating is accessible to everyone.

It’s not. 🧵 Setting aside the fact that a healthy diet won’t cure diabetes, we need to address this regime’s insistence on blaming people for their disabilities. For being poor. For being unhoused. For being an “other”

Every time they open their mouths privilege & blame comes out /2

When I was in my 20s, I was repeatedly denied a medically necessary hysterectomy because I might “meet a man who wants kids”

I was left disabled, forced to undergo six surgeries, multiple blood & iron transfusions to preserve a diseased uterus for a HYPOTHETICAL child.

🧵 This happened in Canada, where we tend to be more Liberal than our neighbours to the South.

I was cishet and white, so faced less barriers to care than marginalized people do.

I still wasn’t permitted to make a decision about my own body.

Wasn’t trusted to know my own mind /2

A quadriplegic man died via MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) after being neglected for 4 days in ER. He was denied a specialized mattress, wasn’t turned & ended up with terrible bed sores.

His partner says she was threatened with removal from the ER for advocating for him 🧵 Everyone who’s involved in the assisted dying debate, both disabled and non disabled, needs to follow this inquest.

People need to understand that you can’t ethically administered assisted death if you aren’t committed to helping patients live as well /2

New York becomes latest place to propose Assisted Dying legislation.

While I support a person’s right to die, I also urge vigilance to ensure disabled people are protected.

The country is ruled by fascists who’ve made it clear a eugenicist policy is underway.
🧵 One need only look at Canada’s MAiD legislation to understand how quickly safeguards can fall off.

People with disabilities (myself included) have had assisted dying recommended in lieu of treatment or palliative care.

“High cost health users” experience this more often /2

There’s a ton of overlap between the Covid Cautious & Chronic Illness communities because people living with chronic illness don’t have the luxury of ignoring the pandemic.

They know what a Covid infection will do to their precarious health. /1 🧵 so when the rest of the world decided to bury their heads in the sand and rush ‘back to normal’, we got left behind.
Stuck bearing the burden of knowing that the pandemic isn’t over.

That every day people are dying or becoming disabled. /2

It took me over a decade to realize I was disabled

Internalized ableism is no joke. It can lead us to push our bodies & deny our reality

🧵 about ableism, disability, covid caution and finding your voice

We aren’t expendable. Activism is more important now than ever before /1 I was a sickly child my whole life - but we didn’t discover the reasons until I turned 30. It was validating to finally have answers. A name for my conditions, explanations for why I never felt well & why my body couldn’t do what other people could. /2

Me at ER for cardiac issues

Dr: “Could you be pregnant?”

Me: “No I had a hysterectomy”

Dr: “You look too young for that? Are you sure?”

Me: “I’m confident”

Dr: “I think you might be confused. Maybe it was your appendix.”

Proceeds to order pregnancy test /1 🧵 I’ve had this interaction more times than I can count

Healthcare workers think I’m “too young” to have had a hysterectomy and automatically assume I’m confusing my womb with another organ.

They ask endless questions, only to end up doing a pregnancy test anyways /2

Today marks the five year anniversary of Covid being declared a pandemic. Some things I want people to remember:

The threat is not gone. People are still dying and becoming disabled every single day

COVID is airborne. It’s always been airborne. 🧵 Droplet transmission was pushed incorrectly & then doubled down on for economic reasons. If governments admit it’s airborne, they have to spend money upgrading air quality and providing respirators etc.

The only way to avoid Long Covid is to not get Covid.
/2

I’ve got a loved one in remission from cancer who doesn’t understand they’re high risk for Covid. They don’t mask.

They’ve had 3 infections & are sick of being sick.

At a recent hospital visit - they were FINALLY open to reconsidering masking & wore provided surgical mask 🧵/1 This was a major step for my relative - it showed that their heart & mind were open to reconsidering their position on masking. Prior to this they were in denial - often saying they never want to think about covid or masks again. /2

As more States propose mask bans, I want to take a moment to discuss claims that it’s “fear mongering” to say that masking is illegal

People claim the medical exemption is “good enough”.

This ignores 3 critical points. Public perception, anti mask sentiment & rampant ableism 🧵 First things first, mask bans make masking a criminal offence. They make the act of wearing a mask illegal

there may be medical exemptions, but they’re incredibly problematic

Lawmakers specifically chose not to exempt medical masks & respirators. The burden is on the wearer /2