the marginalization of the disabled: a pro-life issue

Parents of special-needs children are concerned, and rightly so, about the new administration. It could be argued that there are both pros and cons, for the abortion issue: that while repealing the ACA will have bad results, at least Gorsuch is a better pick than might have been expected. It could be argued that Trump’s foreign policy is at heart no bloodier than US foreign policy has ever been: he’s just more blunt about it.

But across the board, it seems that Trump’s policies and nominations are crafted specifically to harm the disabled. This concern is especially highlighted with the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. As Scott Sargrad points out in “A Danger to Students with Disabilities”:

DeVos’s lack of understanding of even the most basic facets of IDEA is troubling on its own. But even more concerning is the fact that DeVos is a single-issue lobbyist for voucher programs, including programs like the McKay Scholarship in Florida and the Special Needs Scholarship Program in Georgia. These two programs – and others like them around the country – require parents to sign away their rights under IDEA to receive a voucher. Private schools then are not required to provide the special education services that these students need, and parents have no recourse if the schools simply refuse to do so. Parents have little to no information on how the voucher program impacts their rights and even less information on the outcomes of the private schools that participate. Florida’s parent FAQ, for example, does not even mention the rights parents are giving up when accepting the voucher and enrolling their child in private school. In addition, because Florida does not require participating private schools to report student outcomes, it is impossible to know how these students are doing.

But this is only one part of the larger problem. Phoebe Moses Holmes, writing as a long time advocate for disabled children, and as a parent of a special-needs child, states: 

But it’s more than education that’s caught my eye.

First, we have a nominee for Attorney General who also doesn’t support IDEA –

In May 2000, Sessions took to the senate floor to make a lengthy speech on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, arguing that federal protections for students with disabilities was a reason U.S. public schools were failing. – HuffPo

Meanwhile, we have a nominee for SCOTUS who sides with schools over students when it comes to IDEA –

In a second disability rights case, an impartial hearing officer, an administrative law judge, and a federal district court judge all agreed that a young autistic boy, Luke, needed placement in a residential school program due to his total lack of progress in “generalizing” skills — applying skills learned at school to other environments. Judge Gorsuch wrote the opinion reversing. He found that because Luke was making “some progress” toward his education goals in the public school — even though it was undisputed there was no progress outside of school –the school district had met its obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). But Congress had made it clear that the IDEA should help students make progress toward independent living. Generally, not just in school. The narrow and outdated standard used by Judge Gorsuch is now under review in the U.S. Supreme Court. –        (source:ACLU)

 

And then you add up things like the ACA and all it’s handy little bits like insurances can’t deny you if you have pre-existing conditions, attempts to slash Medicaid, etc…

…and you begin to fashion a hat out of tinfoil. Because it all starts feeling like a giant conspiracy against people with disabilities.

This should be cause for serious concern. Protection of disabled persons needs to be at the core of a truly pro-life ethos. And, as long as we’re talking about the unborn, we seem to be alert to this. As an article in Life News states:

The targeting of unborn children in abortion is especially heartbreaking for parents who have raised children with disabilities and experienced the love and joy they share together.

Now, a new flier produced by Right to Life of Michigan provides some startling stats in terms of the percentage of unborn children diagnosed with various medical conditions who become victims of abortion.

“Disabled individuals, no matter what age or status, are human beings worthy of protection. To say a disabled person is less of a human being diminishes the respect for every human life. The value of life does not depend on looks or abilities. There is innate dignity in every human life,” it reads. “Yet unfortunately, unborn and newborn children with disabilities are the least protected members of society. Masked under the cloak of compassion, innocent human beings are being killed without their consent because their lives are proclaimed not worth living.”

The chilling numbers reveal what Right to Life calls the “sinister side of abortion.”

“A study from Wayne State University found that 87% of unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome were aborted. An review of studies in several countries showed 92% of unborn children who were diagnosed with Down Syndrome were aborted,” RLM says.

These numbers reveal a sinister ideology that goes beyond abortion: the ideology of eugenics. Combatting abortion, in this case, is treating a symptom and not a cause. If society continues to disvalue and denigrate the disabled – as well as the poor, the ill, the immigrant, and the racially other – then even as legal abortion supply is reduced, abortion demand will increase, in those demographics that are regarded as less valuable in a supremacist or utilitarian society.

It is absolutely essential that we work to protect the most vulnerable among us from being targeted in the womb. But if they survive to be born into a world that fails to value them, that refuses to listens to the parents of special-needs children, that makes excuses for a billionaire businessman mocking the disabled, and repeatedly tells the disabled or the chronically ill to bootstrap their way into betterment – how pro-life are we, really?

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