Disabled Advocate Joni Takes On Hotter Issues : Ministries: The inspirational author and Christian radio host has been speaking out against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicides.

The strikingly pretty woman in the wheelchair has enjoyed enormous popularity for years among millions of Christians as a symbol of gutsy hope and a charming advocate for the disabled.

Now, Joni, pronounced “Johnny” and known to millions by her first name, is venturing beyond the mom and apple pie world of faith and the handicapped into the rough-and-tumble debates over euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicides.

After joining the fight last year against the ill-fated California ballot initiative Proposition 161, which would have permitted the terminally ill to choose doctor-assisted suicide, Joni Eareckson Tada has traded gibes on sharp-tongued talk shows and was quoted in USA Today as saying that Dr. Jack Kevorkian is “a serial killer.”

Not heavy stuff for public figures accustomed to controversial issues, but it’s a new image for the beguiling representative of evangelical Christianity.

First admired in the late 1970s for her artistry with a mouth-held paintbrush, which she demonstrated on NBC’s “Today Show,” she then wrote an autobiography. It recounted her battle after a 1967 accident, when as a teen-ager she dove into a shallow lake and broke her neck, leaving her paralyzed below the shoulders.

That book was made into a movie, “Joni,” by evangelist Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures, with Joni playing herself. The film has been dubbed in 15 languages. Writing more books--now up to 17--and answering burgeoning requests for advice led to Joni and Friends Ministry, which has grown into a $1.6-million-a-year ministry based in Agoura Hills. It offers financial grants and training conferences nationwide to churches willing to serve people with disabilities.

A superstar on the evangelical circuit who laces her talks with songs from her four record albums, Joni also broadcasts a brief radio program five times a week on 695 religious broadcasting outlets nationwide--considerably more facilities, for instance, than carry a five-minute commentary by a bigger born-again name, Charles Colson.

She has been a guest speaker at nine of Billy Graham’s crusades, including a huge rally in Moscow last year. “The radiance of her own Christian faith and her deep compassion has been combined with a God-given imagination,” said Graham in a written endorsement of her multimedia ministry.

“She’s one of the most inspiring persons I’ve ever known; she electrified our church,” said the Rev. Jess Moody of Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch. Eight years ago, she was the first woman to receive the Layperson of the Year award from the National Assn. of Evangelicals.

Though introduced at times as a “saint,” as she was several months ago at a packed church in Nashville, Tenn., Joni said that she chafes at suggestions that she has attained a level of super-spirituality. “That’s just not the case,” she said.

Now 43, Joni is also sensitive to condescending remarks along the lines of “isn’t it nice that that handicapped girl has something to do.” Although she married high school teacher Ken Tada in 1982, her ministry had already made her financially self-sufficient.

Her high-achiever nature, as it turned out, was dealt only a temporary, though agonizing, setback when she broke her neck in 1967. “I was in every club and extracurricular activity at high school, and I was in the National Honor Society,” said Joni, who before her accident was a religious person. “I was a stickler for details and deadlines then, and I still am.”

Joni’s advocacy in evangelical circles for the rights of the disabled led to an appointment in 1987 by then-President Ronald Reagan to the National Council on Disability. That body crafted the Americans With Disabilities Act signed into law in 1990. Churches and religious organizations were partially exempted from provisions in the act, a source of lament for Joni. “Sometimes I am embarrassed when churches find it so difficult to accept and accommodate people who are disabled, the very people Christ went out of his way to reach,” she once wrote in a letter published by a leading evangelical magazine.

More recently, Joni broached the more contentious issues of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicides by writing a book published last fall, “When Is It Right to Die?” with a foreword by former U.S. Surgeon Gen. C. Everett Koop.

“Here our society just passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, making it easier for disabled people to live, and we’re on the verge of also making it easier for them to die,” she said in an interview. “No one is more adamant about rights than I am, but it gets to a point where an individual’s exercise of rights can be absolutely subversive to society. I see our society beginning to accept the dangerous premise that you might be better off dead than disabled.”

As she speaks out more frequently on controversial issues in non-church settings, however, the risk of criticism and public scrutiny may increase for Joni and Friends, or JAF Ministries as it is officially called.

At the Agoura Hills offices in a building just north of the Ventura Freeway, none of the 19 staff members other than Joni are disabled. Judy Butler, Joni’s longtime executive assistant, said that one of two overseas staff members is an amputee and that until recently the domestic staff included a person with lupus, another with allergy problems, and a third who had polio and died.

Asked about the low number of disabled employees, Joni said: “We have really beat the bushes to let the Christian community know of our need for people to fill out job applications. It’s tough to find people who are disabled and qualified.” She blamed the country’s educational system for graduating too many disabled people without practical job qualifications or experience.

Norma Vescovo of the Independent Living Center of Southern California in Van Nuys was not sympathetic with the hiring record of Joni and Friends.

“It’s not a matter of people with disabilities not being competent; it’s a matter of looking,” said Vescovo, who is disabled. “If she’s going to push the Americans With Disabilities Act in terms of companies hiring people, then she should also represent that.”

On the euthanasia issue, Joni is expected to have the backing of many in the disabled community.

Vescovo said that she and many of her colleagues also opposed Proposition 161 last year. The center where she has been executive director for 18 years works mostly with newly disabled people who are greatly depressed at the beginning stage of their rehabilitations. “At that point, the people don’t know what they want,” Vescovo said.

Joni has not opposed right-to-die measures when the wishes of the dying person are carefully spelled out beforehand and, preferably, are represented through a trusted power-of-attorney arrangement. But her book on the subject also appeared to imply that assurance of Christian salvation should be a key precondition.

“You better be very convinced, very sure, before you pull your plug or someone else’s plug that you know what’s on the other side of the gravestone,” she said in an interview at her office. But, she added, it would be wrong to prolong the process of dying in order to get a confession out of a nonbeliever.

“That’s not appropriate and it’s dehumanizing,” she said. “I think the way to handle a situation like that is to enlist extra prayer support, give that individual every access to spiritual needs and trust God for the rest.”