I only have time for a few comments regarding Polly Toynbees article
> Rights are for the living
> The disability rights commission has made a big mistake in allying
> itself with anti-abortion fanatics
They did not ally themelves with anti-abortion fanatics! It is a cheap shot that she thinks so because they believe some sections of the abortion act are discriminatory.
> Polly Toynbee
> Friday August 24, 2001
> The Guardian
>
> An astonishing statement has just emerged from the new disability
> rights commission. It claims a key section of the 1967 Abortion Act is
> offensive and discriminatory. The act allows late terminations - after
> 24 weeks - only if there is a significant risk of a baby being born
> with a severe disability. The disability rights commission statement
> says this "reinforces negative stereotypes of disability; and there is
> substantial support for the view that to permit terminations at any
> point during a pregnancy on the ground of risk of disability, while
> time limits apply to other grounds in the Abortion Act, is
> incompatible with valuing disability and non-disability equally". The
> sheer breathtaking nonsense of this makes it difficult to know where
> to begin.
The sheer nonsense of her thought is breathtaking. If you limit something and allow it only for certain things like for disability but not for others it's discriminatory. If we prohibit sex selection but not ability selection it's discriminatory. That is a fact. The question is whether that discrimination is acceptable or not. I think the DRC is right to say disability discrimination is not acceptable.
> Of all the mountainous problems that this new commission has to
> confront in fighting for fair treatment for disabled people, to waste
> their time on this angels-on-pins theology of disability is a dismal
> beginning.
You fight discrimination where it happens not where it suits other groups.
> Foetuses are not people
> and the commission should have sent Life back to its tiny rump of
> religious fanatics, the small minority still opposing abortion.
The issue is not whether a foetus is a person. The issue for the DRC is that certain characteristics within a foetus are treated different than others. If the law would say "late term abortion is not acceptable with the exception if the foetus female" I am sure women groups would have been up in arms about such writings.
> Where to start? In recent years the militant disability movement has
> developed a whole new confident and strident identity - no more
> pathetic cripples pleading in soppy charity ads, but a strong demand
> for equal rights in the tradition of the battles for black, women's
> and gay rights. Tipping themselves out of wheelchairs and rolling in
> red paint outside Downing Street was brilliantly effective protest
> theatre. After women's pride, black pride and gay pride,
> proud-to-be-disabled seems to make sense too. But each of these four
> campaigns is different. Each group's identity, cohesiveness and claim
> to victimhood is based on markedly different circumstance. Disability
> campaigners have over-identified with other civil rights issues,
> talking as if they were a race or a gender.
Indeed they see themselves as having the same right to the preservation of their characteristic . Indeed they view ablism as wrong as sexism and racism . Rightly so. She obviously is an ablist because she doesn't get that.
> Some deaf people speak of sign language as a special culture to be
> preserved, some suggesting that if all deafness could be cured it
> would be a form of genocide against the "race" of signers. For this
> reason, some disability campaigners consider the abortion of damaged
> foetuses to be genocide against the imaginary race of disabled people.
> Some even dispute genetic treatments that might cure disability in
> foetuses: "cure" suggests not difference but imperfection.
What's her point? that deaf language is not a culture...? Here we go able bodied imposition of their view over the right of another group to proudly self identify.
> On anti-abortion rallies, pro-Life groups always push forward a
> battalion of disabled people to plead that they would not be here if
> their parents had aborted them. Do we wish them dead, they challenge?
> This kind of madness is hard to argue with. No one is wishing them
> away, just as no parent of a born child, however inconvenient its
> birth, ever wishes it away.
Some wish away the characteristic of disability. That is why they have prenatal screening tests in the first place. Geez what a disingenous woman she is.
>
> But the non-existence of the unborn seems to be a difficult concept
> for many to grasp. What-if-I-was-never-born is a non-thought. Consider
> anyway the hugely wasteful number of fertilised eggs that are swept
> out of the body, all unknowing, or the one in five confirmed
> pregnancies that end in miscarriage, let alone the unborn children
> every fertile woman fails to bear due to contraception. (Or nuns fail
> to bear through lack of sex.) By bearing one child, a woman denies the
> right to life of other putative children who might be conceived while
> she is bearing that one.
That's totally beside the point again. It's not about the unborn but it's about the characteristic in the unborn. With that disability rights angle DIFFERS from the pro-life angle.
>
> No, this vanishes into the realms of absolute nonsense. For a woman to
> choose not to have a disabled child but to have another one instead is
> entirely rational. Once a child is born, the whole story changes. Let
> the commission focus on people who exist, not on making women bear
> disabled children against their will.
Why should it not read let women not bear CHILDREN against their wish. Why should she just have the "right" to not bear a DISABLED child but she has not a right to not bear a FEMALE child. There is NO reason to specify disability unless it is done to discriminate against that characteristic.
> The commission could have taken a far wiser route. They could have
> demanded equal rights to abortion for all with no stipulation about
> disability, just abortion on demand for any woman's private reason.
The DRC just said get rid of the mentioning of disability . The DRC did not say to my knowledge to get rid of late term abortion. And disabled people do not work from a pro-life angle which would say no to late term abortion. They just want to be treated equally so there is no distinction in the allowance of late term abortion based on one characteristic.
> However, since late abortion is allowed in the case of a disabled
> foetus, there is no reason why it should not be permitted on all
> grounds.
The DRC did not question the right to late term abortion -- rather their point is why is it JUST allowed based on disability?
>There are fewer than 100 late abortions a year on grounds of
> disability.
Do we have to reach certain numbers? We are talking about a principle -- that of not singling out disability -- not the numbers of the usage.
> Only the truly desperate, very young and menopausal women
> who don't recognise their pregnancy until too late would seek
> distressing late abortions if the law were changed. So if the
> commission wants "equality", why not go for the absolute right of all
> women to choose, whenever?
The DRC did not question this.
> The disability rights commission has set back the case,
> for the sake of a mad ideology of its own.
>
This article is pure bullshit. Either Polly Toynbee is a writer who cannot think or she has a very nasty agenda.
Anyone responding be forwarned that I am trying to finish a paper for Disability & Society and will not be able to devote my time to a prolonged discussion here.
Marta Russell