Eastwood Continues Disability Vendetta with Million Dollar Baby

Score one for Clint Eastwood for his award winning film, "Million Dollar Baby," a brilliantly executed attack on life after spinal cord injury (SCI). It is exquisitely filmed and acted.
Eastwood, director and star of the film, and actors Hillary Swank and Morgan
Freeman know their craft. Paring the story to basics, Frankie (Eastwood), an
aging manager, agrees to train Maggie (Swank), a talented boxer. Maggie takes
a fall and sustains SCI. Frankie then kills Maggie in a nursing home at her
request.

Eastwood's message that life with SCI, with a disability, is not worth
living is a prejudice shared by many. Missing is an exploration of why Maggie
was in a nursing home without rehabilitation rather than returning home and
attempting a decent quality of life. Eastwood fails to include mention that it
is discrimination, poverty, and an inaccessible society that sometimes lead
newly-injured people to abandon hope and choose death.

"Eastwood is remembered by many for his attack on the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) in 2000," said Marcie Roth, CEO of the National Spinal
Cord Injury Association. "I'm saddened but not surprised that he uses the
power of fame and film to perpetuate his view that the lives of people with
disabilities are not worth living."

Perhaps this movie is Dirty Harry's revenge for being sued in 1997 after
refusing to include $7000 worth of accessible bathrooms in his 6.7 million
dollar resort renovation. Eastwood spearheaded the call to weaken the ADA by
including a detrimental ninety-day notification provision. The fact that
Eastwood refused pre-lawsuit notification via certified mail and was sued
under California state law not the ADA came out at a subsequent congressional
hearing.

"Many people with SCI and other disabilities survive, thrive, and
contribute to our society," stated Roth. "Dirty Harry could win the day and
show us all a better use of his legendary talent by portraying disabled lives
well-lived rather than sending the damaging message "better dead than
disabled."

Founded in 1948, the National Spinal Cord Injury Association is dedicated
to improving the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Americans with
spinal cord injury and disease and their families. This number grows by
approximately thirty newly-injured people each day (see
http://www.spinalcord.org).