Debt does not excuse murder

Imagine this scenario:

A man, who is married, finds himself in financial crisis. He has fallen deeper and deeper into debt, and bills are accumulating. He becomes desperate. Then, he murders his wife. Shortly thereafter, he kills himself.

What are your feelings about this scenario? The husband/killer, the wife/victim, and his motivations?

If you're like most people with a strong conscience, you're repulsed by the murder. Any inkling of sympathy you have for the suicidal desperation of this man is powerfully diminished by the abhorrence of taking the life of another person.

If you've read or heard much about domestic violence and spousal murder, you might contextualize this instance as part of a pattern in which men, desperate enough to take their own lives, will sometimes murder their wives (and sometimes children) before they kill themselves. You might interpret this as a symptom of a culture in which men see wives and children as extensions of themselves, such that their right to end their own lives extends to the right to end the lives of the people who belong to them.

Would your first assumption, when you heard about this scenario of spousal murder-suicide, be that the wife must have consented to it?

Would you assume by default that a wife murdered by her husband must have been a willing participant?

I'm guessing not.

Now add the detail:

The couple were both elderly, with health issues, and the financial crisis was due to medical bills.

Does that change your response?

Are you now assuming that yes, actually, the wife must have consented to be murdered?

Are you now full of compassion for the poor, beleaguered husband, unable to afford to maintain his expensive, burdensome wife?

That's ableism.

Assuming that murdered disabled people must have wanted to be dead, or be better off dead, is ableism.

Giving the benefit of the doubt to disabled people's killers is ableism.

Conceptualizing murder of disabled people as an "understandable" response to circumstances is ableism.

Framing murders of disabled people as arguments for "better services" is ableism.

"But medical debt is a real problem..." No. Stop.

Of course medical debt is a real problem. Of course lack of services for disabled people is a real problem. SO IS MURDER. Healthcare is a human right, but so is NOT BEING MURDERED.