>My reply:
>The logic of your argument does not truly account for the social
>relations which cause women to abort any and all disabled fetus. You
>act as though women's freedom to choose is void of prejudice,
>stereotypical notions of impairment, and not the product of a
>"normalizing" society. The knee jerk aborting of disabled fetus is
>aligned with an ideology of "normality." Nor does your argument take
>into account the medical profession's complicity in the decisions that
>women make about fetus with impairments. The medical institution
>(abortion is a part of) is just as socially oppressive towards
>disabled persons as any other social institution - employment,
>housing, transportation, etc. "Freedom" must come with a materialist
>consciousness otherwise it is just as oppressive as anything else.
>--
>Marta Russell
then your job isn't to abridge rights, thereby strengthening the power of the state. you don't blame those people for making bad decisions that you don't agree with, but you continually and without hesitation harp away at the reasons why people sometimes feel they need to make those decisions--namely lack of money. your job isn't to take away rights in the interest of advancing your rights, but to expose the conditions under which those rights seem inevitably pitted against one another.
you job is to educate people, to fight for interim provisions for caring for children people don't want to raise so they'll do what you want them to do, even if they just don't want to take care of that child, and most importantly, to struggle for a world in which the decision doesn't get made in the first place.
abridging abortion rights because people don't think like you do about raising disabled children is just not the answer to the problem.
kelley