That’s not eugenics. It’s choice!
As I wrote of Singer previously, when you travel down this path, you have to ask if the world is made for you. Is the world comfortable for people like you? Is it safe? Is it just? If the world is made for you, then perhaps it makes sense to turn it away from the lives of others. But if it is not, then i suggest that you join all of us for whom it is not made, and make as much common cause as you can.
Throwing up terms such as “clouded”, “frustrated,” and “un-realized” to describe the lives and potentials of those with disabilities, Singer engages in a dilettante’s defense of genocide, a casual argument for the annihilation of countless people. What is a frustrated life? To be queer in a straight society? A woman under pressure from a patriarchal culture? To be a person of color in a white dominated world?
Living as a person in a “world system whose major economic impulses and cultural investments are directed away” from you? (Bhabha, LoC, as always) This world is not made for a person with disabilities, and the structure of the assumptions of society enforce an exclusion that is both casual and active. The stairs to a courthouse bar access just as much as the prejudice one might encounter within. This world is not made for a person with disabilities, and I will tell you that this is a choice. Is the world made for you?
The rest of this post is from what i commented there.
First, let’s blow the “it’s the mother who bears the burden” argument away. It’s hardly her sole domain, and it’s insufficient to mention parents who aren’t the birth mother…assuming that there is one.
Further more, since when was the responsibility of a child solely the domain of parents? What parent of a able bodied child doesn’t get tax breaks, the offer of public education, opportunities for insurance for their child. etc.. I’ve been in NYC this past week, and there are billboards all over about the summer meals program, to let parents know that food subsidies are available at public schools for their kids. As insufficient as many of these supports are, they reveal a recognition how ever slim, that the work of raising children is communal. No child may be left soley at the discretion of those who raise hir. The existence of a child is one of stewardship, the guard and watch of one who will become a agent and self unto their own.
So why don’t we offer respite care? In home nursing? Support for caregivers?
That certain lives are marginalized or made difficult is not an ontological fact. It is a social reality created by the choices we make and don’t make.
There are plenty of genetic conditions that America makes difficult…but with most of them, we have at least begun to realize that there are social choices afoot. Incorrect ones, that assign difficulty and stigma unjustly.
Disability is social. Not medical.
We could choose to make it easier to live for these people, support their families in loving them.
We choose to call them burdens, and call their lives expendable.
What does that say?
-sly
September 4, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Actually, think about it this way:
Able-bodied people ought to be aborted since there is a KNOWN CORRELATION between high physical ability, strength and violence. Do we want more violent people we have to lock up? Of course not. Better to get rid of the biggest and strongest before they get here; better safe than sorry!
The fact that nobody ever says this, is proof that they don’t give a shit about what is good for society, that is simply a ruse. What they care about is quality control of the population, not what is GOOD for the population. Otherwise, why not make that argument, too? Unthinkable.
Good work, Sly…
September 4, 2007 at 12:13 pm
BTW, I went over there to help you out, dude, as you fight the good fight.
Because honestly, we need to get this able-bodied-abortion program started. I think I’ve figured out how to save millions of dollars for the taxpayers. I hope the folks at Shakesville appreciate my policy recommendations. 😉
September 4, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Paging Bill Bennett, paging Bill Bennett…
It’s all gross generalization…the original example is about Downs, but by the comments, it’s become Tay-Sachs. Funny, that.
I’m not morally opposed to finding treatments, even cures in some circumstances. But you’d best bet that i’m going to be very careful about what we’re curing, why, and who will bear the cost of such programs.
September 4, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Wow. I hadn’t previously given much thought to this subject, and yet your arguments over at Shakes make perfect sense to me. I am so glad I heard about your blog from others, and am now getting to read it.
September 4, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Thank you…it’s good to have you here.
September 4, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Sly, I’m glad you’re over at Shakes trying to explain a little feminism from a disability rights perspective. I’d like to join you, but I can’t. I’m too damn exhausted with those debates.
Thanks.
September 6, 2007 at 10:44 am
>>>That certain lives are marginalized or made difficult is not an ontological fact. It is a social reality created by the choices we make and don’t make.
Thank you particularly for this. And is equally applicable on all sorts of issues..
September 16, 2007 at 4:51 am
[…] Sly Civilian posted on his blog about a post over at Shakesville about the abortion of disabled or probably disabled fetuses. The original poster, Mamasquab, makes the point that since women bear a disproportionate burden of caretaking (both for adults who require it and for children), the moral question of selective abortion is disproportionately focused on them. Sly responds with a similar argument from the other side: since existence with a disability in an ableist society is precarious, pragmatic considerations will always disproportionately disqualify disabled people from their parents´care and social assistance. He also draws a straight line from selective abortion to selective infanticide. I disagree with this, and I think that disproportionate burdens are a lot more inevitable in pregnancy than in childcare. I agree that the rhetoric about burdened parents and special obligation is similar–as is the lack of exploration of what sort of assistance we all receive. […]