Down the anti-abortion road?
Sam Bagenstos, on his always-useful Disability Law blog, looks at what we might take from the fact that in the Schiavo furor of last spring, the disability rights movement was seen to be aligned with right-to-life groups. Sam writes,
This disability rights/right to life connection deserves close attention, for there is good reason to believe that it represents a model that anti-abortion advocacy will increasingly follow...
Uh oh. Sobering, worrisome stuff.
Read the resthere.
My reading of the article is that the author seems to suggest that ANY regulation on end of life for disabled people somehow will lead to regulation of abortion of disabled people.
Even if this were so, we should be having the debate over end of life and, maybe, over abortion as well, as both affect disabled people. Maybe people who are pro-abortion and/or pro-choice *should* be thinking about why they are in favor of essentially unrestricted abortion and why that is a good thing. It is clearly not an easy issue: abortion is such an emotional and gut issue that it is almost impossible to have civil conversations about it.
Still, in our society it is incumbent on those who don't like a law or custom to work to change that law or custom and for those who want to keep a law or custom to work to keep it. Is this not what happened with Roe v. Wade? Namely, that those in favor of legalized abortion worked until they got their perspective legalized, largely due to persuasion? If it is still such a good thing, then a few disability activists talking about the issues important to disabled people aren't going to be able to make much difference.
TL
Posted by: Tim Lillie | October 17, 2005 04:27 PM
In actuality, abortion IS a disability issue. Many people in America seem to want only designer made clothes, Products that are "Flawless" or "Top of the line". Abortion has no REAL answers and it only does harm, GREAT HARM to a woman! The late Surgeon General, DR. C Everett Koop has said that once abortion is legal, itwill open up the door to Euthanasia, infanticide, Physician Assisted Suicide, etc. Therefore, as a gimp, I am against abortion!
Posted by: Michael Tada | October 18, 2005 04:23 PM
I'm a gimp; I'm the father of a gimp. The people who do not believe in abortion should not have abortions; the people who believe that right-to-die is wrong should not choose to die.
Women have abortions and men don't. Therefor, it isn't a choice for men to make.
Posted by: peter webster | February 1, 2006 03:54 PM
What is the usual purpose of someone having an abortion? To prevent the birth of a child that they do not want at that time,or one that someone decided would not have "an acceptable quality of life". What is the usual purpose of disconnecting a person's source of food/liquid in a long term care facility? To end a life that is not of acceptable quality".....there is no difference between the two in reality. Both the life in utero and the one in the bed are of value to that person, it is when that life is seen as a nuisance by someone more powerful than they that you have the now legalised murder of disabled before and after birth.
Posted by: Gail Nichols | May 5, 2006 09:42 AM