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----- Original Message -----
From: Donna Martinez
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 11:39 PM
Subject: [IDA_CRPD_Forum] The Unnecessary Opposition of Rights-women's
rights that deny disability rights
http://www.generations-ahead.org/resources/the-unnecessary-opposition-of-rights
You may want to consider supporting this statement and sign on:
Letter / Call to Action
Robert Edwards, Virginia Ironside, and the Unnecessary Opposition of Rights
Please feel free to show your support and sign on to this statement below.
As people committed to both disability rights and reproductive rights, we
believe that respecting women and families in their reproductive decisions
requires simultaneously challenging discriminatory attitudes toward people
with disabilities. We refuse to accept the bifurcation of women's rights
from disability rights, or the belief that protecting reproductive rights
requires accepting ableist assumptions about the supposed tragedy of
disability. On the contrary, we assert that reproductive rights includes
attention to disability rights, and that disability rights requires
attention to human rights, including reproductive rights.
We offer the following statement in response to two recent events that
promote eugenic reproductive decision-making, and that further stigmatize
disabled people by presenting disability exclusively in terms of suffering
and hardship. Although seemingly disparate events, they share the
presumption that disability renders a life not worth living and that people
with disabilities are a burden on society. Moreover, they seem to imply that
the only appropriate response to disability is elimination, thereby limiting
women's reproductive choices; they suggest that all women must either abort
fetuses with disabilities or use IVF to de-select for disability.
The awarding of the 2010 Nobel Prize for medicine to Dr. Robert Edwards
demands a more considered response. He has made no secret about promoting
reproductive technologies to prevent the birth of disabled children, arguing
that it would be a "sin of parents to have a child that carries the heavy
burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider
the quality of our children." We protest any recognition of Dr. Edwards that
also fails to acknowledge his discriminatory statements, and we dispute the
notion that his political views should be isolated from his medical
accomplishments. It is precisely this separation that pits reproductive
rights against disability rights.
Edwards' work has assisted in the birth of four million babies worldwide and
has helped single people, people struggling with infertility, and gays,
lesbians and transgender people to have biologically related children.
However, we can celebrate Edwards' accomplishments and also call out his
controversial advocacy against disability. In the same way that most of the
articles celebrating his achievements acknowledge the religious and ethical
controversies of his techniques, we can recognize his problematic
disparagement of disability. The role he has played in increasing the
reproductive options for women and families does not need to be justified or
substantiated by arguing for an elimination of disability. It can be marked
as an important reproductive option and means of creating families without
denigrating disability or people with disabilities.
We also protest any use of disability by anti-abortionists in their
criticism of Edwards and his work in developing assisted reproductive
technologies. Many people with disabilities have used such technologies in
creating their own families and recognize that IVF has made their families
possible. Although we share the concern that women and families do not
always have the information they need to make reproductive decisions about
disability, and that stereotypes about disability persist, we do not think
the response to that situation is to oppose assisted reproductive
technologies or limit women's rights.
The recent statements by British advice columnist Virginia Ironside about
the "suffering" of disabled children similarly require a challenge from
disability and reproductive rights supporters. In arguing for the right to
abortion, Ironside stated that knowingly giving birth to a child with
disabilities is cruel, and that in such cases abortion is the "moral and
unselfish" response. She added that if she had a sick or disabled child, she
would not hesitate to "put a pillow over its face," as would "any loving
mother." Although Ironside's comments about infanticide have been rightly
condemned, her assertion that abortion is the only proper response to
disability has prompted little controversy, as has her assumption that
advocacy for abortion rights requires accepting the construction of
disability as unrelenting tragedy. As reproductive rights advocates who are
committed to disability rights, we refuse to accept the rhetorical use of
disability as an argument for abortion rights. Reproductive rights demands
not only access to abortion but also the right to have children, including
children with disabilities, access to information about parenting, and the
social and economic supports to parent all children with dignity.
In other words, we hold both disability rights and reproductive rights
together, refusing arguments for women's reproductive autonomy that deny
disability rights, and refusing arguments for the human rights of people
with disabilities that deny the right of women and families to make the best
reproductive decisions for themselves.
Although our statement is motivated by these events, we recognize that these
are only the most recent manifestations of long-standing prejudices against
people with disabilities and of the use of disability stereotypes to
undermine women's and families' reproductive autonomy and access to
abortion. We hope, with this statement, to support other activists and
scholars who are equally committed to both reproductive rights and
disability rights. We hope that as advocates in movements that share similar
values around civil and human rights we can continue to speak out against
the use of reproductive rights to undermine disability rights and the use of
disability rights to undermine reproductive rights. Reproductive rights and
disability rights are intertwined.
Download Robert Edwards, Virginia Ironside, and the Unnecessary Opposition
of Rights (PDF)
http://www.generations-ahead.org/files-for-download/articles/DS-RJ-statement.pdf
Donna Martínez, Ed.D.
Jean Mermoz 4115#161
Las Condes
Santiago, Chile, SA
Home: 56-2-453-2720
Cell: 56-8- 838-9220
VA, USA/Vonage: 1-571-229-5198
.
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