Why Eastwood's Baby got it wrong

By Anthony Bartl
April 8, 2005
Hilary Swank in a scene from the film <em>Million Dollar Baby</em>.

Hilary Swank in a scene from the film Million Dollar Baby.
Photo: Supplied

Severely disabled people can have a rich and rewarding life. I know.

The Oscar-winning movie Million Dollar Baby has all the homey hallmarks of a feel-good sporting movie until rising boxing star Maggie Fitzgerald (played by Hilary Swank) has her spine broken in a fight.

The subsequent scenes devoted to Fitzgerald's rehabilitation and her battle with the issue of euthanasia are the most poignant and distressing parts of a movie I have ever seen.

But let me make it clear, Fitzgerald makes the wrong decision to persuade her trainer Frankie Dunn (played by Clint Eastwood) to end her life.

Maggie Fitzgerald's fall leaves her with spinal cord damage at cervical one and two resulting in complete quadriplegia and the realities of day-to-day life as a person with a severe disability is played out. She can't breathe for herself so is reliant on a ventilator, she can't move and is too fragile to be moved and so develops pressure sores and she can't walk and is dependent on a wheelchair to get herself anywhere at all.

I also have had to deal with a C1 complete spinal injury and have now been disabled for 19 years. I can empathise with the ethical dilemma confronting Swank and Eastwood's characters. At age six I was a pedestrian crossing a busy suburban road when a car struck me. This accident resulted in my spine being broken at C1 leaving me with only head movement, speech and brain function.

I have experienced being laid up in an intensive care unit hovering between life and death for months and not being able to move. I have also had to wrestle with Fitzgerald's dilemma of deciding whether life is still worth living with a severe disability (although in my case not for very long) or die and never know.

The truth, as I have since found out, is that a severely disabled person's life still is worth living. Judging the lapse of time in a movie is a difficult thing, but it is clear to me Fitzgerald isn't given enough time to overcome the fact that her champion boxing career has ended and to adjust to a new way of living. She doesn't have the time to rehabilitate herself and have the opportunity to learn how to drive a wheelchair with her chin (which I do all the time), or to discover things other than boxing that she might enjoy doing again.

The road to recovery is a long one after such a debilitating disability. There are many, many aspects of a disability that a person needs to grow accustomed to if they are to live happily again. Firstly, there is the disability and secondly there is the life-sustaining assistance that is associated with a serious disability. For me, it took years to become used to my disability - of having to breathe via a ventilator, of being pushed around in a wheelchair and to rely on other people to survive.

However, once I had, it felt great to know that I had overcame such a severe disability and was still able to live a quality-filled life. I still do live a quality life and go on loving it. I have coped with my disability through thinking positively and not letting my disability get in the way of living as normal a life as possible. Sure, there are some things that I can't do, but there's still a lot that I can.

The divisive issue of euthanasia as presented in Million Dollar Baby can be looked at in two different ways. Either Hilary Swank's character was so incapacitated that she wouldn't have had any quality of life and keeping her alive would only prolong her agony. Or, her character did have the faculties to allow her to live a quality of life, which I think she did.

Fitzgerald made the wrong decision to end her life prematurely as she had the faculties of speech, head movement and brain function, and yet still didn't give herself a chance to taste life as a disabled person.

The bottom line, however, is that ultimately it is up to the person suffering to decide. That is only fair as they have to live with their disability. But in my experience, I still do have all the abilities needed to live a quality life, and feel to this day that such a life is still definitely worth living.

What Hollywood has done with Million Dollar Baby is allow the insidious nature of euthanasia to rear its ugly head cloaked in a veil of compassion. It was chilling to watch Frankie Dunn calmly walk into the hospital and in a premeditated moment switch Fitzgerald's ventilator off.

With one single motion he had denied her the chance to experience the new joys of what life could be like and how she would now cope with C1-C2 complete quadriplegia.

It struck me that it was such a waste of a life for Dunn (who had given his all to turn Fitzgerald into a champion) to just turn off her ventilator and not try enough to talk to her about it.

As I have learnt over time, a great deal of support from family and friends does heal a lot of wounds.

It is a vital ingredient for any severely disabled person to have to be able to go forward and live a life once more. Maybe that's what Fitzgerald didn't have enough of - the support (apart from Dunn) to consider the long-term opportunities of living with disability.

Without support from family and friends in terms of making decisions about attendant care, obtaining first-class equipment and so on there can't be any quality of life.

Anthony Bartl is an arts student at La Trobe University.


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