It's the indignity. It's the inability to get out of bed or get onto the toilet, let alone drive a car or go shopping without another's help. I can speak for literally hundreds of people whose bedside I've sat at over the years. I call them 'clients' because I'm not a medical professisonal - they've had enough when they can't go to the bathroom by themselves. That's why everybody in the movement talks about dignity.
People have their pride.
They want to be in charge. Many people with disabilities need such assistance in the bathroom, assistance which they direct and control, assistance which they do not regard as undignified. Instead she reinforced and lethally acted out the devaluing attitudes of our society, telling sick or disabled people they lacked dignity because they needed assistance with basic activities of daily living, and would be better off dead. Too many people have internalized society's contempt as self-hatred. Too few have had contact and on-going support from other members of this nation's largest minority group, people with disabilities.