>I don't like having the RTLs on this side of the issue, believe me, it is not
>my cup of tea. One problem we have is distinguishing the disability
>perspective from the RTL (who by the way are always eager to portray us as
>RTL). I agree with you that abortion is a serious matter not like having an
>organ removed.
yeah, agreed that i wouldn't be happy about that either! but pramatically,
it is true that this would make an argument like singer's dead in the
water, even were we to have different views about infantacide.
>
>I support abortion but take the Adrienne Asche's position that it crosses the
>line when one aborts because one does not like the characteristic of the
fetus
>(sex, disability, hair color, whatever else they will know about us in the
>womb) rather than having the abortion because the conditions in one's life
>makes that choice necessary to abort ANY fetus. This way I challenge
>assumptions about disablement as one would challenge the assumption that
having
>a boy is more desirable than having a girl. I realize many many people view
>disability as a primary reason to abort. Trouble is the more market oriented
>our society becomes, the less willing parents are to have a non "perfect"
baby.
i do understand where you are coming from. as i stated at the outset of my entry into this, my mother almost had an abortion with me. so i've had to think carefully about this. the thought doesn't loom large in my mind--at least not the way the rtlers would like to believe it does! but nonetheless. now, she felt she couldn't have me because of public judgment not really because of economic circumstances. she was working three jobs, living at home and could continue to live at home, had no thought of going to college, though she completed her training as a beautician at the local beauty school and so had a skill that would support both of us at the time.
the biggest trouble was illegitimacy and fear of judgment. she was so fearful that she never told anyone, save for one friend, and hid it til labor day and i was born 20 day later. amazing , huh?
my point for teling this story is that attitudes toward what is and isn't desirable change. and another point is that there may be reasons for having an abortion that have nothing to do with economic constraints. a woman should be able to have one even if she's a wealthy 25 yr. old.
which leads me to my concern about asche's argument is that, while i think it's wrong to abort simply because one is unhappy with the looks of a child, such views question the motives of an individual and judge them rather than viewing it as a social problem that is produced systematically by the capitalist, sexist, racist social relations in this society. in other words, the *cause* of those feelings and attitudes lies elsewhere. individuals are reponsible for producing them, yes. but changing those attitudes, i don't think, will come about by constraining access to abortion in the months after it might be possible to find out eye color, hair color and i think what you want to say is, whether or not the child has a disability. that's really the most important issue for us, right? as i recall, you worry that devaluing the disabled by allowing abortions because parents don't want to raised disabled children is a problem because it contributes to and strengthens the kinds of attitudes we'd like to eradicate. but, i just can't see why constraining access to abortion will necessarily promote the oppression of the disabled. it seems to me that this oppression is rooted in many other places and is primarily and fundamentally located w/in capitalism though not entirely so insofar as it is a form of cultural imperialism.
so i would say that perhaps it isn't so much a tradeoff b/t women's rights and the rts of the disabled. if you say that aborting because of eye color is a problem b/c it's frivilous does that open the door to say that a healthy, married, employed women with a husband who does half the housework, and with plenty of money to hire help, who owns her own business and won't suffer from the mommy track is therefore frivilous for not wanting to have a child? people have thought that my abortions were frivilous because we could have raised children. it would have been hard but i would have finished my phd, gotten a job and things would have a-ok. and, they're right. i just didn't, ultimately, want to raise a child at that point in my life, even though my partner was really pretty good about housework and the like. also, what about, and there are plenty of people i know who say this, they don't want children because they don't like children that much? does aborting b/c you don't like children encourage anti-child sentiments which some think are pretty darn real in this country given what we allow to happen to a lot of them?
i guess i'd want to take a two pronged approach to the concerns you've raised here before. 1. changing the perception of bodily, physical perfection through education, media criticism and the like. 2. changing the conditions which make it diff for those who may not be so much concerned with 1 as they are concered about the difficulty in raising a disabled child. i'm sure i don't have to lay them out for you, but i will for others reading: better services, better education, new forms of parenting that don't lay the entire burden on the parents, obviously adequate incomes, sexism that means that women bear the burden of the mommy track and bear the burden of primary care more often than not.
kelley
>Disability activists have only recently inserted ourselves into the issue
>whereas before the "professionals" always spoke ABOUT US WITHOUT US.
There is
>still lots of confusion about how best to get our message out there without
>seeming RTL. And as within any identity group, (as with women) there will be
>some people with disabilities who do not favor abortion under any
>circumstances, but I am not one of those and neither are most advocates I
know.
>
>Marta
>