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Eugenics and Reproductive Choice continued

People with disabilities are increasingly aware of and alarmed by the anti-disability bias that underlies much prenatal testing and selective abortion. However, the disability rights movement as a whole has yet to comprehensively address the issue. Part of this is due to the movement’s traditional reluctance to deal with medical-related matters, although most of us have been subject to medical oppression. We were late in getting involved in the fight to protect disabled infants from being discriminatorily denied food or treatment in hospitals, and we are less than viable players in the current debate over revamping the health care system.

A more significant reason, though, why the movement has not formulated a position on prenatal testing and selective abortion is that the movement, for quite legitimate reasons, is unwilling to take a stand that could be seen as taking sides in the abortion controversy. …Numerous people with disabilities are pro-choice, and indeed disabled women tend to perceive the same need to have access to abortion as nondisabled women.

…Quite simply put, the movement’s dilemma is that abortion is being used to keep people with disabilities from entering the world, and a great number of us want abortion to remain legal.

The solution is for the movement to carefully define the issues that should concern us as disability rights activists. As a movement, we should not take any position on the rights of a fetus versus the rights of a pregnant woman. However, what we can and must do is take a position against any medical, legal or social policy that is based on the attitude that people who have disabilities are categorically inferior to others and therefore would be better off if they did not exist and everyone else would benefit by their absence...

January/February 1994

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