Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Criminal Law

: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Harriet Johnson, 50, Activist for Disabled, Is Dead

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

June 7, 2008 Harriet Johnson, 50, Activist for Disabled, Is Dead By DENNIS HEVESI New York Times Harriet McBryde Johnson, a feisty champion of the rights of the disabled who came to prominence after she challenged a Princeton professor?s contention that severely disabled newborns could ethically be euthanized, died on Wednesday at her home in Charleston, S.C. She was 50. No cause has been determined, her sister, Beth Johnson, said, while pointing out that her sister had been born with a degenerative neuromuscular disease. ?She never wanted to know exactly what the diagnosis was,? Beth Johnson said. The condition did not stop Harriet Johnson from earning a law degree, representing the disabled in court, lobbying legislators and writing books and articles that argued, as she did in The New York Times Magazine in February 2003, ?The presence or absence of a disability doesn?t predict quality of life...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).