Disabled rights and the attack on abortion
SOME DISABILITY theorists argue against selective abortion--abortion following prenatal testing--on the basis of a disability. Richard Devlin and Dianne Pothier have written that society uses such testing "'because we have determined that certain kinds of lives are not worth living," and are therefore aborted.
Ruth Hubbard takes this analysis a step further. In her essay "Abortion and disability," she argues that following prenatal testing, a woman carrying a fetus with a disability or potential disability would feel compelled to have an abortion because society would rebuke her and her burden of a child if she carried the pregnancy to term. "There is something terribly wrong with this situation," she writes.
Still, Hubbard claims to be pro-choice. "A woman must have the ability to abort a fetus, whatever her reasons, precisely because it is a decision about her body and how she will live her life," she writes. "But the decisions about what kind of baby to bear inevitably are bedeviled by overt and unspoken judgments about which lives are 'worth living.'"
Essentially, Hubbard is arguing that women need access to abortions only when disability is not a determining factor in their decisions.
We must reject oscillation on the question of abortion. Disability theorists who waver about abortion when a fetus with a disability is involved do a disservice to women by helping to roll back the gains of Roe v. Wade.
Not every working-class family can afford the care of a child with a disability, and with both parents working in most families, time for such care is also an issue. Abortion on the basis of disability is precisely a decision about how a woman "will live her life." Caring for a child with a disability is not possible for every mother, and she should have access to all the information before making her decision.
Living with a disability is expensive, time-consuming and oftentimes frustrating, and isn't something to be overlooked when women choose whether to have a child. Each disability brings its own challenges. For parents of non-ambulatory quadriplegics with normal cognition like this author, for example, hospital bills for care after birth are astronomically expensive. After that come wheelchairs that could cost thousands of dollars, then wheelchair lift vans--and the costs never seem to end.
The time-consuming and frustrating part is maneuvering in a society set up for able-bodied people. My mother had to fight my home school district to allow me into regular-education classes. Most entry-level service jobs are not conducive to wheelchair use, so people with disabilities must jump through hoops to get government assistance. Even finding ways into buildings is a constant concern. Other disabilities require more of parents.
The disability movement and the women's liberation movement do not oppose one another on this issue. Disability can be a determining factor for an abortion, but parents who want a child and feel confident they can care for him or her will have the child, disabled or not.
We must avoid confusion in our shared goal: abortion on demand, whatever the reason--including disability.
Allen Hines, Kent, Ohio
