Ken Hanly wrote:
>
> Comments are after sections:
>
> COMMENT: If abortions on demand are allowed then eugenic abortions are
> allowed. If eugenic abortions are allowed then the value of the lives of the
> disabled will be undermined. But you would allow abortions on demand and
> therefore you undermine the value of the lives of the disabled. How can you
> reconcile yourself to this?
Because I do not believe that pitting rights against rights works. More succinctly the right to choose has not produced social justice. And as Gordon beautifully pointed out I am not totalitarian in my thinking. I don't want to control you, I want you to thing about what you do.
> COMMENT: Well I am sure that the left supports things like the following:
> wheel chair ramps,
Well in theory but not when it actually comes to making their meeting places accessible. Again, Jim Charlton wrote about this in Monthly Review. 1994. You cannot rely on me to be your educator. disabled people have all too similar experiences all over the country.
After all these years the Peace Center in Los Angeles still does not have an accessible restroom, last time I was there the elevator did not work but the meeting was still held on the second floor. The local Alliance for Democracy never made their meeting place accessible after numerous requests to do so. Nor would they change the meeting place to a community center that was accessible - they liked having it in a private home which was not accessible. The meetings held after the Democratic Convention protests were in inacessible locations. They offered to carry me up the steps! I could go on and on. And I hear this from other disabled people regularly.
Some have been exemplary, like the Midnight Special Bookstore which has a section on disability rights, not the medical model of impairment. But most of the left hasn't gotten away from the old ways of thinking. I've devoted my work to undoing this state of affairs. It is a long long road but it is slowly happening.
Marta