Thread:
Who is next?
The only reason that the Mail dredges up this non-story every so often is to chip away at abortion rights for women. Fuck them and their crocodile tears.
While I don’t disagree with your assessment of the Mail’s motives, it isn’t a “non story”.
The eugenics-by-stealth created by modern prenatal testing is a major issue within the disability rights community, and has been for a long time. I wrote papers on this stuff back when I was doing Bioethics a decade ago.
Interestingly: while abortion rates for Down’s pregnancies are near 100% amongst disability-naive parents, those rates drop dramatically if the parents have had personal experience of people with Down’s. Prenatal education and counselling has major impact.
It is very disappointing that a supposedly advanced society has such an attitude towards people with disabilities; that they choose to abort them so they don’t have to deal with them. It is interesting that in a place like Denmark, where they have moved from internment in state institutions to care at home, the end result is the extermination of people with identifiable disabilities. Perhaps this is a failure of their moral and financial support for families of people with disabilities. They should fix that, instead of facilitating pre-natal tests and subsequent abortions.
An overview of the situation from Tom Shakespeare:
In this article, I argue that it is unhelpful to characterise the current practice of prenatal testing as straightforwardly eugenic. However, I demonstrate that the medical profession, and the context in which reproductive decisions are made, undermines the capacity for free choice, and promotes eugenic outcomes. I propose a position which accepts women’s right to choose, but opposes social and cultural pressures for selective termination of disabled people. Finally, I suggest measures which will make it easier for prospective parents to make an informed choice about their reproductive decisions.
Shared by ADAPT:
“Check out this PBS documentary about the Gang of 19! They formed in Denver, Colorado and were the precursor of ADAPT. Captioned! #ADAPTandRESIST”
“Encouraged by civil rights movements of the 1960s, the Disability Rights Movement gained momentum leading to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Decades earlier in 1978, 19 individuals tossed aside their wheelchairs and blocked city buses deemed inaccessible for the physically disabled. Meet the brave individuals who dared to change the status quo and discover how this one act led to years of advocacy in the state of Colorado and inspired the nation.”
